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And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| What action did Don consider for testing the water flow in Superior? | [
"Taking a rowboat over the edge to see what would happen.",
"Jumping into North Lake to see if there was an electrical current.",
"Swimming through the stream to see what would happen.",
"Throwing something into the stream and seeing if it would funnel back into Superior."
] | 0 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| What did Don use as a method for seeing over the edge of the stream? | [
"A mirror found in the Cavalier dorms.",
"A compact from Miss Jervis.",
"A compact from Alis.",
"A camera to take a photograph."
] | 2 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| Why did Alis tell Don that he should order his eggs scrambled for breakfast the next morning? | [
"It was difficult for him to cut them with the briefcase handcuffed to himself.",
"They were better cooked that way in the cafeteria.",
"Because there were more available scrambled.",
"Because they were not cooked in water when they were scrambled."
] | 0 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| What impression can be made about Don’s feelings towards Alis? | [
"He was afraid of her because of her boldness.",
"He was quickly becoming fond of her.",
"He found her to be attractive, yet too young for his liking.",
"He found her to be too young and annoying."
] | 1 | true |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| What is the significance of the title of the story to the context? | [
"It’s a reference to the dangers contained within the package.",
"It’s a reference to the delay of the package being received.",
"It’s a reference for the postman to know the package wasn’t broken in shipment",
"It’s a reference to there being a baby toy rattle inside the box."
] | 2 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| Based on the context of the story, on which day was the package received to the home? | [
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday"
] | 1 | true |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| Who was Sally in relation to Milly in the story? | [
"Her great-grandmother",
"Her grandmother",
"Her mother",
"Herself in a past life."
] | 1 | true |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| Had the portrait of H. H. Hartshorne not been knocked off the wall, what would have likely happened in the story? | [
"Milly would have never been born.",
"Mr. Hawkins would have fired everyone who attended the party.",
"The partygoers would have remained sober that night.",
"The package would have never been delivered."
] | 3 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| How long had the branch of Hartshorne-Logan been opened? | [
"Eighty years",
"Eight years",
"Twenty years",
"Two years"
] | 0 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| Why did the staff at Hartshorne-Logan have to substitute some of the items in the package? | [
"They were sold out of because of the holiday sales.",
"They had recalled most of the items because they were dangerous.",
"They were outdated by many years.",
"They were too drunk to read the catalog numbers correctly."
] | 2 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| Why had Ann Hartley written the first letter to Hartshorne-Logan? | [
"To disregard her complaint about the package not being received.",
"To complain about incorrect items being sent.",
"To complain about the package not being received.",
"To request a refund for the package being damaged."
] | 2 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| What was Ann’s first complaint with the dress she ordered for Sally? | [
"It was much to small for the child.",
"The shoulders were lumpier than a small girl’s dress should be.",
"It was the incorrect color.",
"It was much too large for the small child."
] | 2 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| What caused Sally to float through the air? | [
"The manky that was in the shipment.",
"The strange doorbell with no wire.",
"They eyeball from the detective kit.",
"The dress that was in the shipment."
] | 3 | false |
RATTLE OK
By HARRY WARNER, JR.
Illustrated by FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What better way to use a time machine than
to handle department store complaints? But
pleasing a customer should have its limits!
The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was
threatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas.
The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under
the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had
screamed: "He'll drown!"
One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had
remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another
story.
The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three
times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed
trees and midnight church services.
The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of
the janitors were putting on a display of Burmese foot-wrestling in
one corner of the general office. The janitor foreman weighed fifty
pounds less than the Burma gentleman, who was the salesman's customary
opponent. So the climax of one tactic did not simply overturn the
foreman. He glided through the air, crashing with a very loud thump
against the wall.
He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H.
Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its
glass splintered against the floor.
The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even
felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand.
"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!" cried Mr. Hawkins, the
assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present,
worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the
broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of
glasses.
Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait
to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung
the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight.
"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the
holiday," he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his
attention on any working day.
With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy
picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as
the picture came free. Hawkins rolled the picture like a scroll and put
it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a
drink that would make him feel even better.
A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She
picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening
machine.
"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!" someone shouted at her. "Have
another!"
Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and
returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: "Oh, I see.
They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old."
Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's
voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: "I'll bet that's been in
there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that
that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago."
"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this." Milly
turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so.
The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out.
Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly
and picked up the order form.
"This thing has never been processed!" Raising his voice, he shouted
jovially, "Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that
Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This
poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!"
Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form:
"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for
vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl." She turned to the
assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in
her young life. "Let's fill this order right now!"
"The poor woman must be dead by now," he objected, secretly angry
that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he
brightened. "Unless—" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent
a great proposal and the room grew quiet—"unless we broke the rules
just once and used the time warp on a big mission!"
There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner:
"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it
must be used only for complaints within three days."
"Then let's find out!" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and
pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. "Someone scoot down to the
warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the
stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the
catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years."
Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal
of excitement.
"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother!
Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can
barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my
grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some
trouble her mother had once with the firm. My mother didn't want me to
come to work here because of that."
Mr. Hawkins put his arm around Milly in a way that he intended to
look fatherly. It didn't. "Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's
thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll
substitute a manky!"
Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the
large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared
pugnaciously at the bundle.
"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!" she
told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper
wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never
seen before.
The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to
the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But
the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to
the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and
therefore hadn't been broken in shipment.
Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely
spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the
house.
Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby
legs and grabbed her mother's skirt. "Want!" she said decisively.
"Your dress ought to be here," Ann said. She found scissors in her
sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to
open the parcel.
"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should
throw away my letter of complaint," she told her daughter. "And by the
time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter.
Then they'll write again." Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted
the expletives that she wanted to add.
The translucent cord was too tough for the scissors. Ann was about to
hunt for a razor blade when Sally clutched at an intersection of the
cord and yanked. The twine sprang away from the carton as if it were
alive. The paper wrappings flapped open.
"There!" Sally said.
Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she
tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A
slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the
dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned.
It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble
the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue
illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small
girl's dress should be.
But Sally was delighted. "Mine!" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress.
"It's probably the wrong size, too," Ann said, pulling off Sally's
dress to try it on. "Let's find as many things to complain about as we
can."
The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally
was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started
to look vacantly at the distant wall.
"We'll have to send it back," Ann said, "and get the one we ordered."
She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed
her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress.
It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to
loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then
began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before
she collided with the far wall.
Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed
in delight.
Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling
uncertainly toward her daughter when the door opened behind her.
"It's me," her husband said. "Slow day at the office, so I came home
early."
"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—"
Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed
her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box.
"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?" He was looking at a small
box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word:
MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it.
Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object.
A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end.
"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no
wire."
"I don't know," Ann said. "Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—"
He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. "They must
have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment."
He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again.
Sally was still in his arms.
"That's the doorbell, I think," he said, looking at the next object. It
had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug
for a wall socket.
"That's funny," Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment.
"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of
the doorbell."
The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had
ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover
and said: "Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she
does."
Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to
walk, then rose and again floated, this time toward the hassock on
which the manky lay.
His jaw dropped. "My God! Ann, what—"
Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. "Les! The hassock! It
used to be brown!"
The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming
green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann
had furnished the room.
"That round thing must be leaking," Les said. "But did you see Sally
when she—"
Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She
jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two
fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action.
"Drop it!" she yelled. "Maybe it'll turn you green, too!"
Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after
it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire
interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green.
When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The
wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant
green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle.
Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let
it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally
jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front
teeth green.
She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly.
He said: "It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the
shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and
that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green
dye or whatever it is will wash off."
Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled
off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental
about her removing it.
"I'll get dinner," she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel.
"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into
the kitchen, Sally."
Ann strode resolutely toward the rear of the house. She kept her eyes
determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron
pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of
propulsion.
A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened:
Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice
said from the front of the house, "Don't answer the front door."
Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit
under his arm.
She went into the front room. Her husband was standing with fists on
hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. "Neatest trick I've seen
in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up
while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady
Burnett out there pushed the button?"
"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on
them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there
repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get
boring after a while. And it might insult someone."
Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The
figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted
impatiently on the porch.
Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked
up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part
of the door frame.
"Queer," he said. "That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't
see how it can keep the door from opening."
Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: "Won't you come to the
back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck."
"I just wanted to borrow some sugar," the woman cried from the porch.
"I realize that I'm a terrible bother." But she walked down the front
steps and disappeared around the side of the house.
"Don't open the back door." The well-modulated voice from the small
doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann
looked doubtfully at her husband's lips. They weren't moving.
"If this is ventriloquism—" she began icily.
"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the
office," Les said. "But you'd better let the old girl in. No use
letting her get peeved."
The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen
door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open
when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her
neighbor.
"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather
hectic day in an awful lot of ways."
Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold.
She frowned and shoved her portly frame against something invisible.
It apparently yielded abruptly, because she staggered forward into
the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked
suspiciously behind her.
"The children have some new toys," Ann improvised hastily. "Sally is
so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see
now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?"
"I already have it," Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother.
The boy turned back to the detective set which he had spread over the
kitchen table.
"Excitement isn't good for me," Mrs. Burnett said testily. "I've had a
lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet."
"Your husband is better?"
"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me." Mrs.
Burnett edged toward the hall, trying to peer into the front of the
house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall.
Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed
with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed
the threshold.
Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She
nearly collided with him, coming in the other direction.
"Where did this come from?" Les held a small object in the palm of
his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something
unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably
like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and
rather bloodshot veins.
"Hey, that's mine," Bob said. "You know, this is a funny detective kit.
That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works."
"Well, put it away," Ann told Bob sharply. "It's slimy."
Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled
from the smooth, level table, bounced twice when it hit the floor, then
rolled along, six inches behind him. He turned and kicked at it. The
eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick.
"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry," Ann said. "She's so
upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting
her."
Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe
distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box.
"Hey, watch out!" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box,
landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light
across Les's hands.
Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced
through an instruction booklet, frowning.
"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy," Les told his
wife. "I don't know why you ordered such a thing." He tossed the
booklet into the empty box.
"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up," she replied. "Look
at the marks you made on the instructions." The black finger-marks
stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper.
Les looked at his hands. "I didn't do it," he said, pressing his clean
fingertips against the kitchen table.
Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling
polished table's surface.
"I think the Detectolite did it," Bob said. "The instructions say
you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a
long time."
Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him
silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap
and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when
Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown.
"My God!" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. "She got out of
that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?"
Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But
in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in
the parcel. Her heart sank.
She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: "Les, I think
it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time
for a nap. It seems impossible, but—" She shrugged mutely. "And I
think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed."
She looked worriedly into the reddened eyes of the small girl, who
whimpered on the way to the bedroom. Ann carried her up the stairs,
keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward
out of her arms.
The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after
dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal.
Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball.
Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann
put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the
rhythmic rattle, soft but persistent, that emerged from the hall
closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep.
When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into
the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed.
She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les
called the doctor before going to work.
The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the
manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to
school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing
a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood
out on its side:
"
Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate
today.
"
The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly
at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly
quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have
crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order.
She tore open the envelope and read:
"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the
balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will
readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume
the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent
order as soon...."
Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace,
knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after
work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint
department when the phone rang.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to come down to the school, Mrs. Morris," a
voice said. "Your son is in trouble. He claims that it's connected with
something that his parents gave him."
"My son?" Ann asked incredulously. "Bob?"
"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son
insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He
claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking
by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family
in the neighborhood for blankets. Bob has always been a good boy and
we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity
involving his name, if you'll—"
"I'll be right down," Ann said. "I mean I won't be right down. I've got
a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And
I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys,
too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by."
Just as she hung up the telephone, the doorbell rang. It rang with a
normal buzz, then began to play soft music. Ann opened the door without
difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz.
"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor," Ann said while he took the
child's temperature, "but we can't get that dress off Sally."
"Kids are stubborn sometimes." Dr. Schwartz whistled softly when he
looked at the thermometer. "She's pretty sick. I want a blood count
before I try to move her. Let me undress her."
Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist
as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and
began to pull it back, she screamed.
The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point
where it touched Sally's skin.
"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't
understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight."
"Don't bother trying," Ann said miserably. "Just cut it off."
Dr. Schwartz pulled scissors from his bag and clipped at a sleeve. When
he had cut it to the shoulder, he gently began to peel back the edges
of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The
physician smoothed the folds hastily back into place.
He looked helpless as he said to Ann: "I don't know quite what to do.
The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to
death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may
kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin."
The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of
the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself
under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder
rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo.
Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. "An ambulance. Looks as if
they're stopping here."
"Oh, no," Ann breathed. "Something's happened to Les."
"It sure will," Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. "I won't
have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black
fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or
shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing
out front?"
"They're going to the next house down the street," the physician said.
"Has there been sickness there?"
Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. "What's wrong with me?
My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I
touch."
The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. "Every human has natural
oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their
fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this
sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin
specialist."
Ann was peering through the window, curious about the ambulance despite
her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless
and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance.
A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs.
Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like "Murder!" came sharply
through the window.
"I know those bearers," Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open.
"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?"
The front man with the stretcher looked up. "I don't know. This guy's
awful sick. I think his wife is nuts."
Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk,
gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular.
"It's murder!" she screamed. "Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's
going to die! It means the electric chair!"
The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into
her mouth to quiet her.
"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him," Dr. Schwartz
shouted to the men. "We've got a very sick child up here."
"I was afraid this would happen," Les said. "The poor woman already has
lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks
that somebody is poisoning him."
Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared
unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly.
Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start
shaking him.
"I got something important to tell you," Bob said rapidly, ready to
duck. "I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to
tell you what I did."
"I heard all about what you did," Ann said, advancing again. "And
you're not going to slip away from me."
"Give me a chance to explain something. Downstairs. So he won't hear,"
Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor.
Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The
doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: "Don't answer me,
don't answer me, don't go to the door."
"Why did you do it?" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into
weary sadness. "People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the
rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—"
"Don't bother about the girls' clothing," Bob said, "because it was
only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did
before I left the house."
Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the
knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas.
"I forgot about it," Bob continued, "when that ray gun accidentally
went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time
to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective
kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to
see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—"
"He put stuff in the sugar?" A deep, booming voice came from the front
of the house. Mother and son looked through the hall. A policeman stood
on the threshold of the front door. "I heard that! The woman next door
claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you
under arrest."
The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from
the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman
staggered back, sitting down abruptly on the porch. A scent of ozone
drifted through the house.
"Close the door, close the door," the doorbell was chanting urgently.
"Where's that ambulance?" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the
steps. "The child's getting worse."
| What happened to Les when he held the eyeball from the detective kit? | [
"It caused him to leave black finger-marks on everything he touched.",
"It left his hands sticky even after repeatedly washing.",
"It burned his hands.",
"His hands started to turn bright green."
] | 0 | false |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| What did Templin and Eckert find odd about the children they encountered? | [
"They all looked much younger than the children on Earth.",
"They were all more well-behaved than any children they had seen on Earth",
"They were all impressively healthy.",
"They looked much older than the children on Earth"
] | 2 | true |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| What was the mission of Eckert and Templin? | [
"To locate Pendleton",
"To find out what happened to Pendleton",
"To get to know the primitive way of life.",
"To try to cover up what happened to Pendleton"
] | 1 | false |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| What was said by Nayova to make Eckert feel uneasy about Pendleton? | [
"Eckert and Templin were staying in the same house that Pendleton had stayed in when he died",
"Nayova didn't like that Eckert and Templin arrived without notice.",
"Pendleton was rather rude to people and they didn't like his attitude about his accommodations.",
"Nayova didn't like that Pendleton had arrived without notice."
] | 0 | true |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| From the text, what can be inferred about the thoughts in Pendleton's demise? | [
"The information did not match up with his cause of death being suicide.",
"Everyone was in agreement that Pendleton abandoned his position and returned home by choice.",
"Everyone was in agreement that Pendleton was still alive and in hiding.",
"The information matched up with his cause of death being suicide."
] | 0 | true |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| Who was the first attache to travel to Tunpesh? | [
"Pendleton",
"Eckert",
"Templin",
"The information is not given within the text."
] | 0 | false |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| How did Templin find about about Pendleton's death? | [
"He was told by Nayova",
"He received a formal letter from the captain.",
"He received a letter from Pendleton himself.",
"He was told by Eckert."
] | 3 | false |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| Why can we infer that Eckert had changed the office window-scenery before telling Templin about Pendleton's demise? | [
"In order to make the scenery less dreary than the news would already seem.",
"In order to let in light to the dark room so that he could see his reaction.",
"As a last effort to convince Eckert to travel to Tunpesh and see the scenery for himself.",
"In order to show what the current state was outside."
] | 0 | false |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| How long were Eckert and Templin planning to stay on Tunpesh? | [
"6 years",
"6 days",
"6 months",
"6 weeks"
] | 2 | false |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| Why was Templin leery of the children on Tunpesh? | [
"They seemed to be much older than children and only disguised as such.",
"Their appearance gave him an eerie feeling about their potential danger.",
"He knew even children were capable of doing damage with a weapon.",
"They were too eager to come near strangers and that made him uneasy."
] | 2 | true |
THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops.
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered.
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it.
Who had killed Cock Robin?
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep—not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.
A faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "Yes?"
"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more
information?"
A drowsy mumble from the other cot: "He wasn't there long enough. He
committed suicide not long after landing."
The room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was
slowly slipping. Takeoff was only seconds away.
Why do people commit suicide?
"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable
breath. "It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be
alive."
Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently
at his tunic. The air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly
perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. A
few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly
inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the
foliage.
The rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage,
was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and
discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now,
with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges.
It won't
be long before it will be green again
, he thought. The grass looked
as though it grew fast—it would certainly have plenty of time to grow
before the next ship landed.
He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was
suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six
months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would
be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were
up.
He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the
warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months
at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the
time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old
, he thought,
thinking about the warmth and
comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on
his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment
felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like
cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the
surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath."
"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this."
Eckert nodded agreement. "It wouldn't fit, would it? It would be like a
famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the
princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." He gestured toward the
village. "You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward
appearance, could you?"
The rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills.
The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over
the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched
in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream.
It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the
earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't
seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty
retreat when the wind was blowing toward you.
A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of
kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered.
Eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed
odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of
childhood. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him
and Templin.
Templin studied them warily. "Better watch them, Ted. Even kids can be
dangerous."
It's because you never suspect kids
, Eckert thought,
you never think
they'll do any harm. But they can be taught. They could do as much
damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have
other weapons.
But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the
piny scent of the trees.
One of the adults of the village started to walk toward them.
"The reception committee," Templin said tightly. His hand went inside
his tunic.
He couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, Eckert realized. This was his
first time out, his first mission like this. And, of course, Pendleton
had been a pretty good friend of his.
"I'd be very careful what I did," Eckert said softly. "I would hate to
start something merely because I misunderstood their intentions."
The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of
white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his
knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had
the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly
seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the
feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look
at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures.
"You are
menshars
from Earth?" The voice was husky and pleasant and
the pronunciation was very clear. Eckert regarded him thoughtfully
and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most
natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he
was hardly either friendly or hostile.
"You learned our language from Pendleton and Reynolds?" Reynolds had
been the anthropologist.
"We have had visitors from Earth before." He hesitated a moment
and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, Eckert thought, in the
Terrestrial sign of greeting. "You may call me
Jathong
if you wish."
He paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids
who were around. They promptly scattered and picked up the luggage.
"While you are here, you will need a place to stay. There is one ready,
if you will follow me."
He was polite, Eckert thought. He didn't ask what they were there
for or how long they were going to stay. But then again, perhaps the
natives were a better judge of that than he and Templin.
The town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a
wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see,
much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving.
Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and
practically every house in the village had its small garden.
What manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central
square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the
warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and
weaver's looms. The other part of the square was given over to the
native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where
numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the
cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
It was late afternoon when they followed Jathong into a small,
white-washed house midway up a hill.
"You are free to use this while you are here," he said.
Eckert and Templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. They were well
furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they
didn't have they could easily do without. The youngsters who had
carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. It was
getting dark; Eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along,
took out an electric lantern and lighted it. He turned to Jathong.
"You've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. You may
take what you wish of anything within this box." He opened another of
the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods—brightly colored cloth
and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that Eckert
knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination.
Jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to
the light. Eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all
impressed. "I am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing I
want." He turned and walked away into the gathering darkness.
"The incorruptible native." Templin laughed sarcastically.
Eckert shrugged. "That's one of the things you do out of habit, try
and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need
them." He stopped for a moment, thinking. "Did you notice the context?
He didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. He said there was
nothing
that he wanted. Implying that everything he wanted, he
already had."
"That's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?"
"No, I'm afraid it's not." Eckert started unpacking some of the boxes.
"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking
lot, aren't they?"
"Too healthy," Templin said. "There didn't seem to be any sick ones or
ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem
natural."
"They're probably just well brought-up kids," Eckert said sharply.
"Maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the
mud on the way home from school." He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at
the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was
potentially dangerous.
"Ted." Templin's voice was strained. "This could be a trap, you know."
"In what way?"
The words came out slowly. "The people are too casual, as though
they're playing a rehearsed part. Here we are, from an entirely
different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual
manner. They couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four
times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much
curiosity did they show? Hardly any. Was there any fear? No. And the
cute, harmless little kids." He looked at Eckert. "Maybe that's what
we're supposed to think—just an idyllic, harmless society. Maybe
that's what Pendleton thought, right to the very end."
He was keyed up, jumpy, Eckert realized. He would probably be seeing
things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every
corner.
"It hasn't been established yet that Pendleton was killed, Ray. Let's
keep an open mind until we know for certain."
He flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his
body relax completely. The cool night wind blew lazily through the
wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass,
and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was
going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six
months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people
seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. If he ever retired some
day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would
be pleasant to spend his old age here. And the fishing was probably
excellent....
He turned his head a little to watch Templin get ready for bed. There
were advantages in taking him along that Templin probably didn't
even realize. He wondered what Templin would do if he ever found out
that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own
psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own
feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in Templin's.
A few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled
for an instant on a small metal box strapped to Templin's waist. A
power pack, Eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his
tunic. A very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon.
There were disadvantages in taking Templin, too.
"Just how primitive do you think the society is, Ted?"
Eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his
pipe and tobacco.
"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities.
Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical
knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and
nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of
some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and
their music are advanced. Free art exists along with purely decorative
art, and their techniques are finely developed."
"I'm glad you agree, then. Take a look at this." Templin threw a shiny
bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. Eckert picked it up and inspected
it. It was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp.
"What's it for?"
"They've got a hospital set up here. Not a hospital like any we know,
of course, but a hospital nonetheless. It's not used very much;
apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are
hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. The strip of metal
there is a scalpel." He laughed shortly. "Primitive little gadget, but
it works well—as well as any of ours."
Eckert hefted it in his palm. "The most important thing is that they
have the knowledge to use it. Surgery isn't a simple science."
"Well, what do you think about it?"
"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at
least in fields where they have to have it."
"How come they haven't gone any further?"
"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you
know."
"Did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?"
"The important thing," Eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if
they'd use them. And I rather doubt that they would. We've been here
for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've
had food and water and what fuel we need."
"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the
slaughter," Templeton said.
Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of
sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment
in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It
complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project
seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would
have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could
among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he
didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything.
"You're convinced that Pendleton was murdered, aren't you?"
Templin nodded. "Sure."
"Why?"
"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along
those lines. But nobody has mentioned Pendleton; nobody has volunteered
any information about him. And he was an attache here for three
years. Didn't anybody know him during that time? We've let slip a few
discreet statements that we would like to talk to Pendleton's friends,
yet nobody's come around. Apparently, in all the three years he was
here, Pendleton didn't make any friends. And that's a little hard to
believe. It's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any
information about him is being withheld for a reason."
"What reason?"
Templin shrugged. "Murder. What other reason could there be?"
Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the
scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to
market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an
inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so
damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or
too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all
look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while."
"Does it? I hadn't noticed." Eckert turned away from the blinds. His
voice was crisp. "I knew Don Pendleton quite well, too," he said. "But
it isn't blinding me to what I'm here for. We came to find out what
happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. What
we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the
future. I would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already
made up your mind."
"You knew Pendleton," Templin repeated grimly. "Do you think it was
suicide?"
"I don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come
down to it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. I'm
trying to keep an open mind."
"What have we accomplished so far? What have we found out?"
"We've got six months," Eckert said quietly. "Six months in which
we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to
cultivate informants. We would get nowhere if we came barging in asking
all sorts of questions. And don't forget, Ray, we're all alone on
Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find
out that we know it is?"
Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked
to the window. "I suppose you're right," he said at last. "It's nice
living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help
thinking that Don must have liked it here, too."
One of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, Eckert
thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry.
"
Pelache, menshar?
"
"
Sharra!
" He took the small bowl of
pelache
nuts, helped himself
to a few, and passed the bowl on. This was definitely the time to
enjoy himself, not to work or worry. He had heard about the
halera
a
few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he
and Templin had been invited. It was a good chance to observe native
customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments.
The main courses started making the rounds and he took generous
helpings of the roasted
ulami
and the broiled
halunch
and numerous
dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. Between every course,
they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but
he noticed that nobody drank to excess.
The old Greek ideal
, he thought:
moderation in everything.
He looked at Templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and
shrugged mentally. Templin looked as if he was about to break down and
enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic,
where he had strapped his power pack. Any fool should have known that
nothing would happen at a banquet like this. The only actual danger lay
in Templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret
later on. And even that danger was not quite as likely now.
There will be hell to pay
, Eckert thought,
if Templin ever finds out
that I sabotaged his power pack.
"You look thoughtful,
menshar
Eckert."
Eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the Tunpeshan on his
left. He was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a
certain aura of authority.
"I was wondering if my countryman Pendleton had offended your people in
any way, Nayova." Now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he
knew about Pendleton's death.
"So far as I know,
menshar
Pendleton offended no one. I do not know
what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous
man."
Eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender
ulami
bone and tried to
appear casual in his questioning.
"I am sure he was, Nayova. I am sure, too, that you were as kind to him
as you have been to Templin and myself. My Government is grateful to
you for that."
Nayova seemed pleased. "We tried to do as well for
menshar
Pendleton
as we could. While he was here, he had the house that you have now and
we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities."
Eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. What
Nayova had said was something he'd make sure Templin never heard about.
He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and
took another sip of the wine.
"We were shocked to find out that
menshar
Pendleton had killed
himself. We knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to
believe he had done such a thing."
Nayova's gaze slid away from him. "Perhaps it was the will of the Great
One," he said vaguely. He didn't seem anxious to talk about it.
Eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of
information together. They probably had a taboo about self-destruction
which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even
harder for him to find out by direct questioning.
A native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked
into the room. The circle broke to let them through and they came and
knelt before Nayova. When he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated
to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native
dance.
The sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of
drums took its place. The beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm
of the dancers. The small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed
to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions
of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening
limbs. Eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. Apparently the dance was
the Tunpeshan version of the
rites de passage
. He glanced across
the circle at Templin. Templin's face—what he could see of it by the
flickering light—was brick red.
A voice spoke in his ear. "It is hard for us to imagine anybody doing
what
menshar
Pendleton did. It is ..." and he used a native word that
Eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "
obscene
."
The dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small
garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching
adulthood. Acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying
routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer.
They were all excellent, Eckert thought. If anything, they were too
good.
The bowl of
pelache
nuts made its way around again and Nayova leaned
over to speak to him. "If there is any possibility that I can help you
while you are here,
menshar
Eckert, you have but to ask."
It would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of Pendleton's
friends, but there was a way around that. "I would like to meet any
of your people who had dealings with Pendleton, either in business or
socially. I will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way."
"I think they would be glad to help you. I shall ask them to go to you
this coming week."
| Why did Eckert think that one would have to view the committee member's teeth to know his age? | [
"He seemed wise beyond his years.",
"He had disguised himself as an old man with gray hair but no wrinkles.",
"He acted too much like a small child.",
"He looked both young and old at the same time."
] | 3 | false |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Why did Judy spent a week with her grandmother for a week during summer? | [
"So that her parents could take a vacation.",
"So that her grandmother would have an opportunity to spent time with her.",
"So that her father, a doctor, could travel out of the country for work.",
"So that she could solve mysteries that were filed away in her grandmother's attic."
] | 0 | false |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Who did Judy give credit for warning the people in town that a flood was coming? | [
"Her brother, Horace.",
"Her sister, Lois.",
"Herself, due to her mystery solving ability.",
"Her sister, Lorraine."
] | 0 | false |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Why would the trip Judy had taken with her grandparents to the fountain have likely felt longer than when she was traveling with Lois and Lorraine? | [
"Lorraine was speeding through the roads to the fountain.",
"Her grandparents were traveling by wagon.",
"She had napped in the car, causing the ride to feel shorter.",
"She had napped in the wagon, causing the ride to feel longer."
] | 1 | false |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Why did Judy start crying in the attic of her grandparents home? | [
"She was trying to cry to get tears for the fountain of wishes.",
"She was lonely with no friends.",
"She was sad that her parents wouldn't let her come on their vacation.",
"She was afraid of the attic."
] | 1 | true |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| What did Judy fall asleep on the summer when she was fourteen? | [
"A hammock",
"A flying carpet",
"A wagon",
"A car"
] | 0 | false |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| What was Judy's grandmother delivering on the day that they took their wagon ride? | [
"Pies that she had baked.",
"Magic carpets",
"Old magazines that she had collected for years.",
"Hooked rugs"
] | 3 | false |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Of the three, who seems to keep holding secrets in more than the others? | [
"Lois",
"All three equally",
"Judy",
"Lorraine"
] | 3 | true |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Why did Lorraine duck her head when another car passed by the group on their way to the fountain? | [
"She had recently forged checks and people were looking for her.",
"She was afraid someone would report that they were trespassing.",
"She feared that they were going to collide and she was covering her face from impact.",
"She knew who the new owner of the estate was and didn't want to be seen."
] | 3 | true |
The Haunted Fountain
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine,
it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t
anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters
now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be
loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s
part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double
wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe
she’d understand—understand any better than I do.
Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no
exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming
in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited
for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have
problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t
solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one
single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll
believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved
all those mysteries. I met you when the whole
valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened
by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace,
not me. He was the hero without even meaning to
be. He was the one who rode through town and
warned people that the flood was coming. I was off
chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh.
“What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed.
“I know now that keeping that promise not
to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and
could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding
her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk
about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve
solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or
two before the flood, but what about the haunted
house you moved into? You were the one who
tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar
and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing
ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did
you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back,
“there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There
was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but
what she was or how she spoke to me is more than
I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling.
And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them.
They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with
this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of
them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re
stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed
Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and
show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She
wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries,
but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally
told them, the summer before they met. Horace
had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered
that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton
Lee, who gave him his job with the
Farringdon
Daily Herald
. He had turned in some interesting
church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him
the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that
he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon
where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted
mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and
loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she
confessed now as she reviewed everything that had
happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact
that her parents left her every summer while they
went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they
think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told
her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery
series you like. When they’re finished there are
plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother
never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s
saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for
them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how
you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired
eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a
vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too
little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to
the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It
was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton
and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy
went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who
scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t
glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer,
and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling
behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with
yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say
you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you
can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so
much as to escape to a place where she could have a
good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth
birthday. In another year she would have outgrown
her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or
be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a
vacation of her own. In another year she would
be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands
and solving a mystery to be known as the
Ghost
Parade
.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling
her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no
idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There
seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears
came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As
Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen
on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!”
she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of
walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett
mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a
fountain still caught and held rainbows like those
she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
But all that was in the future. If anyone had told
the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one
day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in
their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who
used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day
she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so
are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a
kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him.
The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the
summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and
spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing,
she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to
pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with
all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly
exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered
it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother
and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion,
“Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people
know your wishes instead of muttering them to
yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what
Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied.
“There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next
day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain
exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center
of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it.
Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the
water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy
had stared at them a moment and then climbed the
steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud.
“Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no
one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you
shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely
come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a
tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will
surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your
grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded
her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up
there in the attic?”
“Then you—you
are
the fountain!” Judy remembered
exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It
doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had
said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly.
“Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any
longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming
to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a
wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in
those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had
been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved
away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of
having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody
in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how
lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister,
and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made
little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before
they vanished, and so I began naming the things I
wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were
wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I
wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton,
and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to
think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful.
Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied
airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots
of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a
G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far
as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the
spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything
more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois
asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more
things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep
pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one
about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I
wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That
seemed impossible at the time, but the future did
hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing
Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think
sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then
it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter
or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t
know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the
strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was
enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she
answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so
at the time. I wandered around, growing very
drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into
it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember
waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain
had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it
wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured
her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a
beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick
with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly,
“Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long
way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy
said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any
time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too,
and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens.
I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream
you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t
you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if
I had been older or more experienced. I really should
have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the
secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went
away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t
really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing
for a friend when I met you, Lois. It did seem
impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine
was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered.
“It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by
the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that
things started happening so fast that I completely
forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t
believe I thought about it again until after we moved
to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and
saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,”
Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve
seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the
picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll
show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while
Judy was telling them the story of the fountain.
Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had
tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up
the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously
with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks
he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including
lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine?
He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there
are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with
the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her
grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s
tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was
removed. But there was still a door closing off the
narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry
reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where
I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and
the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling
noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid
of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,”
confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing
room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious
about black cats, but they are creepy. Does
Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy.
Pausing at still another door that led to the darker
part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously,
“Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody
care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy
relating still more of what she remembered about
the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and
said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came
true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would
she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this
house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those
you see on that high shelf by the window. I think
she and Grandpa like the way they lived without
any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the
old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died
the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they
wished neither of them would outlive the other. If
they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more
thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes.
Another could have been to keep the good old days,
as Grandma used to call them. That one came true
in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the
past when they kept all these old things. That’s what
I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little
myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things
were the way they used to be when I trusted
Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois
and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all
she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched
through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine
was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed
monster coming between her and her handsome husband,
Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had
seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness
in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of
the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It
is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!”
Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m
sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly
to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home.
But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way.
If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love
to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically.
“Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little
more closely the picture they had found. “It looks
like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned.
“Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny
all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The
Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you
come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine
back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly
to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off
into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them.
“I never thought it led to a house, though. There
isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents
took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?”
Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed
trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to
it under one condition. They were not to drive all
the way to the house which, she said, was just over
the hilltop. They were to park the car where no
one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure.
She and Lois both argued that it would be better to
inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it
looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they
started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and
easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed
and said if they did find the fountain she thought
she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said
about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you
let people know about them instead of muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know
about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon
be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur
coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too
warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this
trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves
as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they
had covered the distance that had seemed such a
long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s
wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve
just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t
think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough
to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked
queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s
old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had
some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still doesn’t
explain what happened afterwards. When I woke
up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse,
wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to
see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something
she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You
were telling us how you woke up in the hammock,
but you never did explain how you got back home,”
Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it,
but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember
driving home along this road. You see, I thought my
grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise
and would return for me. I told you I was all alone.
There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next
hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I
couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old
tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally,
I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about
your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where
the hammock was and then through an archway,”
Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes
peered out at me from unexpected places. I was
actually scared by the time I reached the old tower.
There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard
the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he
was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise,
and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like
that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop
and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered.
“The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered
them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for
Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
“I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they
turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate.
“Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s
another car coming.”
As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine
ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind
Judy until the car had passed. The man driving
it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember
his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a
long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered
most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois
when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for
playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine
begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there
any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do,
can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew
more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly
road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge
of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very
green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond.
The sky was gray with white clouds being driven
across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can
see it over to the left. It looks like something out of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder
what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It
would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But
if there are new people living here they’ll never give
us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy
suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends
as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the
road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for
the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It
won’t be enchanted. I told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If
you know anything about the people who live here
now, I think you ought to let us know. Otherwise,
I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”
“I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do
know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember
Roger Banning from school, don’t you?
I’ve seen him around here. His family must have
acquired sudden wealth, or else he’s just working on
the estate.”
“Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you
tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places
together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively.
“I was just out for a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a
car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger
Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better
than that. I did know him slightly, but not from
school. The boys and girls were separated and went
to different high schools by the time we moved to
Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a
lot better. He was in our young people’s group at
church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer
mention Dick Hartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”
“For what?” asked Judy.
Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts
to gossip.
“Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from
his father’s desk and forged the names of a lot of important
business people. I think he forged some legal
documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal Penitentiary.
It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she
would have preferred to forget. She liked to think
she was a good judge of character, and she had taken
Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would
never stoop to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,”
Lois said impatiently. “Are we going to look
for it, or aren’t we?”
“Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I
just like to know what a tiger looks like before he
springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition
of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who
seems to know the answers, but you’re not telling.
Hiding your face back there gave you away. You’ve
seen that character who drove down this road and,
for some reason, you were afraid he would see you.
Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied
evasively, “People don’t generally enter private
estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided,
“in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect
we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may be accused
of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two
dark-coated figures strode down the road toward
them. “You drove right by a
NO TRESPASSING
sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to
meet us!”
| Why did Lois decide to turn the car around? | [
"There were two approaching dark-coated figures.",
"She didn't want her license plate visible from the road.",
"She was going to park facing out in case they had to make a quick exit.",
"She feared the other car they had almost swiped would return and call the police."
] | 2 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why were the beings readily applying for the trip to Earth? | [
"They were looking for a way to overturn Earth.",
"If was their only opportunity after the Terra for Terrans movement.",
"They were bored of their lives on their home planets.",
"They were hoping for handouts."
] | 1 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why was the Vegan not chosen to make the trip to Earth? | [
"There were too many of his kind already in inventory.",
"They were worrisome and difficult to work with.",
"He was much to large in size to accommodate.",
"The upkeep for the species was too much."
] | 3 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why was the large Kallerian not chosen for the journey? | [
"There were already four Kallerians in inventory.",
"His species was too large to travel in the group.",
"He was argumentative during the interview process.",
"His payout demands exceeded their budget."
] | 0 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why did the Wazzenazzian feel that he would be beneficial as an employee to the recruiter? | [
"He could morph into any species he wanted for outwards appearance.",
"He said he knew all there is to know about alien life-forms",
"He was capable of speaking all languages.",
"He was powerful among the Wazzenazzian and capable of swaying decisions."
] | 1 | true |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why did Lawrence close his eyes and toddle around in a 360-degree rotation? | [
"That was a sign that he was happy.",
"That was a sign that he was irritated with the recruiter's decision.",
"That was a sign that he was giving an apologetic smile.",
"He was disoriented."
] | 2 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why did the recruiter offer Lawrence $50 Galactic a week? | [
"That was what was promised to all travelers to Earth for display.",
"He was able to offer him less, knowing he would still accept and be grateful.",
"He could be paid less because he was smaller and less of an attraction.",
"He would be paid less because he would also be reimbursed for expenses and have free travel."
] | 1 | true |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why were the Sirian spiders rejected for the travel plan? | [
"They demanded too high of payment.",
"They had an over-supply of their species.",
"They all expected a handout",
"They were difficult to work with."
] | 1 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why was the interviewer uninterested in Gorb? | [
"He was demanding and rude, which the interviewer did not bend for.",
"He was a fugitive.",
"He appeared to be a human.",
"He was bargaining with sympathy, which the interviewer did not bend for."
] | 2 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| Why was the Stortulian so determined to make it to Earth? | [
"He wanted to seek revenge on his wife.",
"He was desperate for money.",
"He wanted to find and bring back his wife.",
"He was fearful of his future with the other Stortulians."
] | 2 | false |
Birds of a Feather
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Getting specimens for the interstellar zoo
was no problem—they battled for the honor—but
now I had to fight like a wildcat to
keep a display from making a monkey of me!
It was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien
life-forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back from my rented
office. As I came down the block from the hotel, I could hear and see
and smell them with ease.
My three staff men, Auchinleck, Stebbins and Ludlow, walked shieldwise
in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens
came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures—and all of
them eager for a Corrigan contract. The Galaxy is full of bizarre
beings, but there's barely a species anywhere that can resist the old
exhibitionist urge.
"Send them in one at a time," I told Stebbins. I ducked into the
office, took my place back of the desk and waited for the procession to
begin.
The name of the planet was MacTavish IV (if you went by the official
Terran listing) or Ghryne (if you called it by what its people were
accustomed to calling it). I thought of it privately as MacTavish IV
and referred to it publicly as Ghryne. I believe in keeping the locals
happy wherever I go.
Through the front window of the office, I could see our big gay tridim
sign plastered to a facing wall: WANTED—EXTRATERRESTRIALS! We had
saturated MacTavish IV with our promotional poop for a month preceding
arrival. Stuff like this:
Want to visit Earth—see the Galaxy's most glittering and exclusive
world? Want to draw good pay, work short hours, experience the thrills
of show business on romantic Terra? If you are a non-terrestrial,
there may be a place for you in the Corrigan Institute of
Morphological Science. No freaks wanted—normal beings only. J. F.
Corrigan will hold interviews in person on Ghryne from Thirdday to
Fifthday of Tenmonth. His last visit to the Caledonia Cluster until
2937, so don't miss your chance! Hurry! A life of wonder and riches
can be yours!
Broadsides like that, distributed wholesale in half a thousand
languages, always bring them running. And the Corrigan Institute really
packs in the crowds back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind,
the only really decent place where Earthmen can get a gander at the
other species of the universe.
The office buzzer sounded. Auchinleck said unctuously, "The first
applicant is ready to see you, sir."
"Send him, her or it in."
The door opened and a timid-looking life-form advanced toward me on
nervous little legs. He was a globular creature about the size of a
big basketball, yellowish-green, with two spindly double-kneed legs and
five double-elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body.
There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones,
one above each arm. Plus a big, gaping, toothless mouth.
His voice was a surprisingly resounding basso. "You are Mr. Corrigan?"
"That's right." I reached for a data blank. "Before we begin, I'll need
certain information about—"
"I am a being of Regulus II," came the grave, booming reply, even
before I had picked up the blank. "I need no special care and I am not
a fugitive from the law of any world."
"Your name?"
"Lawrence R. Fitzgerald."
I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick
cough. "Let me have that again, please?"
"Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The 'R' stands for
Raymond."
"Of course, that's not the name you were born with."
The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360-degree rotation,
remaining in place. On his world, that gesture is the equivalent of
an apologetic smile. "My Regulan name no longer matters. I am now and
shall evermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a Terraphile, you see."
The little Regulan was as good as hired. Only the formalities remained.
"You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"I'll be placed on exhibition at your Institute on Earth. You'll pay
for my services, transportation and expenses. I'll be required to
remain on exhibit no more than one-third of each Terran sidereal day."
"And the pay will be—ah—$50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and
transportation."
The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping
on one side, two on the other. "Wonderful! I will see Earth at last! I
accept the terms!"
I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were
signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into
the other office to sign him up.
I grinned, pleased with myself. We needed a green Regulan in our show;
the last one had quit four years ago. But just because we needed him
didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A Terraphile alien
who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran monicker
would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get
to Earth. My conscience won't let me really
exploit
a being, but I
don't believe in throwing money away, either.
The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran IX. Our outfit
has all the ursinoids it needs or is likely to need in the next few
decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was
followed by a roly-poly blue-skinned humanoid from Donovan's Planet,
four feet high and five hundred pounds heavy. We already had a couple
of his species in the show, but they made good crowd-pleasers, being
so plump and cheerful. I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign at
anything short of top rate.
Next came a bedraggled Sirian spider who was more interested in a
handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real over-supply
of, it's those silver-colored spiders, but this seedy specimen gave it
a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute, and he didn't even get
the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging.
The flora of applicants was steady. Ghryne is in the heart of the
Caledonia Cluster, where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had
figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here and we were right.
It was the isolationism of the late 29th century that turned me into
the successful proprietor of Corrigan's Institute, after some years
as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system. Back in
2903, the World Congress declared Terra off-bounds for non-terrestrial
beings, as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement.
Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down,
a non-terrestrial could only get onto Sol III as a specimen in a
scientific collection—in short, as an exhibit in a zoo.
That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is,
of course. A zoo. But we don't go out and hunt for our specimens; we
advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth
once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it.
We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had 690 specimens
before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life-forms.
My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I
reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up—if it can.
After an hour of steady work that morning, we had signed eleven new
specimens. At the same time, we had turned away a dozen ursinoids,
fifty of the reptilian natives of Ghryne, seven Sirian spiders, and no
less than nineteen chlorine-breathing Procyonites wearing gas masks.
It was also my sad duty to nix a Vegan who was negotiating through a
Ghrynian agent. A Vegan would be a top-flight attraction, being some
400 feet long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I didn't see
how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their
upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day, and not just any
old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the Vegan.
"One more specimen before lunch," I told Stebbins, "to make it an even
dozen."
He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long
close look at the life-form when it came in, and after that I took
another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as
I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earthman.
He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was
tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty-blond hair, and
though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look
about him. He said, in level Terran accents, "I'm looking for a job
with your outfit, Corrigan."
"There's been a mistake. We're interested in non-terrestrials only."
"I'm a non-terrestrial. My name is Ildwar Gorb, of the planet Wazzenazz
XIII."
I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line
at getting bilked myself. "Look, friend, I'm busy, and I'm not known
for my sense of humor. Or my generosity."
"I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job."
"Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as
Earthborn as I am."
"I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth," he said smoothly. "I
happen to be a representative of the only Earthlike race that exists
anywhere in the Galaxy but on Earth itself. Wazzenazz XIII is a small
and little-known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary
fluke, my race is identical with yours. Now, don't you want me in your
circus?"
"No. And it's not a circus. It's—"
"A scientific institute. I stand corrected."
There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I
guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on
his ear without another word. Instead I played along. "If you're from
such a distant place, how come you speak English so well?"
"I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath—not the kind that reads minds, just
the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate
back to colloquial speech."
"Very clever, Mr. Gorb." I grinned at him and shook my head. "You spin
a good yarn—but for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith
from Earth, stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to
Earth. No deal. The demand for beings from Wazzenazz XIII is pretty low
these days. Zero, in fact. Good-by, Mr. Gorb."
He pointed a finger squarely at me and said, "You're making a big
mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a
hitherto utterly unknown race identical to humanity in every respect!
Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely like human teeth! And—"
I pulled away from his yawning mouth. "Good-by, Mr. Gorb," I repeated.
"All I ask is a contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big
attraction. I'll—"
"
Good-by, Mr. Gorb!
"
He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to
the door. "I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think
it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you
another chance."
He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile.
This was the best con switch yet—an Earthman posing as an alien to get
a job!
But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness
intellectually. There's no such place as Wazzenazz XIII and there's
only one human race in the Galaxy—on Earth. I was going to need some
real good reason before I gave a down-and-out grifter a free ticket
home.
I didn't know it then, but before the day was out, I would have that
reason. And, with it, plenty of trouble on my hands.
The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a
Kallerian. The Kallerian was the sixth applicant that afternoon. I
had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable from Miazan,
and said no to a scaly pseudo-armadillo from one of the Delta Worlds.
Hardly had the 'dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office when the
Kallerian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him
officially.
He was big even for his kind—in the neighborhood of nine feet high,
and getting on toward a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three
stocky feet, extended his massive arms in a Kallerian greeting-gesture,
and growled, "I am Vallo Heraal, Freeman of Kaller IV. You will sign me
immediately to a contract."
"Sit down, Freeman Heraal. I like to make my own decisions, thanks."
"You will grant me a contract!"
"Will you please sit down?"
He said sulkily, "I will remain standing."
"As you prefer." My desk has a few concealed features which are
sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed
life-forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger, just in case of
trouble.
The Kallerian stood motionless before me. They're hairy creatures, and
this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his
body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket
of fur. He was wearing the kilt, girdle and ceremonial blaster of his
warlike race.
I said, "You'll have to understand, Freeman Heraal, that it's not our
policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our
Institute. And we're not currently in need of any Kallerian males,
because—"
"You will hire me or trouble I will make!"
I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already
carrying four Kallerians, and that was more than plenty.
The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. "Yes, you have
four representatives—of the Clan Verdrokh! None of the Clan Gursdrinn!
For three years, I have waited for a chance to avenge this insult to
the noble Clan Gursdrinn!"
At the key-word
avenge
, I readied myself to ensnarl the Kallerian
in a spume of tanglemesh the instant he went for his blaster, but he
didn't move. He bellowed, "I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to
Earth, enroll a Gursdrinn, or the consequences will be terrible!"
I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double-dealers, and
one of the most important of those principles is that I never let
myself be bullied by anyone. "I deeply regret having unintentionally
insulted your clan, Freeman Heraal. Will you accept my apologies?"
He glared at me in silence.
I went on, "Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest
possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another
Kallerian now, but I'll give preference to the Clan Gursdrinn as soon
as a vacancy—"
"No. You will hire me now."
"It can't be done, Freeman Heraal. We have a budget, and we stick to
it."
"You will rue! I will take drastic measures!"
"Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Heraal. I give you my word I'll
get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another
Kallerian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting—"
You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a
zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor. And there's always
the chance that, by picking a given member of a race, we're insulting
all the others.
I nudged the trouble-button on the side of my desk and Auchinleck and
Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at right and left.
They surrounded the towering Kallerian and sweet-talkingly led him
away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked
them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw,
but he kept up a growling flow of invective and threats until he was
out in the hall.
I mopped sweat from my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next
applicant. But before my finger touched the button, the door popped
open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins.
"Come here, you!"
"Stebbins?" I said gently.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment, and he
came running in—"
"Please, please," squeaked the little alien pitifully. "I must see you,
honored sir!"
"It isn't his turn in line," Stebbins protested. "There are at least
fifty ahead of him."
"All right," I said tiredly. "As long as he's in here already, I might
as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins."
Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out.
The alien was a pathetic sight: a Stortulian, a squirrely-looking
creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been a
lustrous black, was a dull gray, and his eyes were wet and sad. His
tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at
full volume.
"Begging your most honored pardon most humbly, important sir. I am a
being of Stortul XII, having sold my last few possessions to travel
to Ghryne for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with
yourself."
I said, "I'd better tell you right at the outset that we're already
carrying our full complement of Stortulians. We have both a male and a
female now and—"
"This is known to me. The female—is her name perchance Tiress?"
I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian
entry. "Yes, that's her name."
The little being immediately emitted a soul-shaking gasp. "It is she!
It is she!"
"I'm afraid we don't have room for any more—"
"You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female Tiress,
she is—was—my own Fire-sent spouse, my comfort and my warmth, my life
and my love."
"Funny," I said. "When we signed her three years ago, she said she was
single. It's right here on the chart."
"She lied! She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors
of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs never to remarry,
languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You
must
take me to
Earth!"
"But—"
"I must see her—her and this disgrace-bringing lover of hers. I must
reason with her. Earthman, can't you see I must appeal to her inner
flame?
I must bring her back!
"
My face was expressionless. "You don't really intend to join our
organization at all—you just want free passage to Earth?"
"Yes, yes!" wailed the Stortulian. "Find some other member of my race,
if you must! Let me have my wife again, Earthman! Is your heart a dead
lump of stone?"
It isn't, but another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by
sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I
wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel
happy—not to mention footing the transportation.
I said, "I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict
on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for
scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in
coming isn't scientific, I can't in all conscience
lie
for you, can
I?"
"Well—"
"Of course not." I took advantage of his pathetic upset to steam right
along. "Now if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up,
I might conceivably have done it. But no—you had to go unburden your
heart to me."
"I thought the truth would move you."
"It did. But in effect you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent
criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to
me," I said piously.
"Then you will refuse me?"
"My heart melts to nothingness for you. But I can't take you to Earth."
"Perhaps you will send my wife to me here?"
There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an
unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of
scientific interest, and the World Government will deport the
undesirable alien back to its home world. But I wouldn't pull a low
trick like that on our female Stortulian.
I said, "I'll ask her about coming home. But I won't ship her back
against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is."
The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed half-way to mask
his tears. He turned and shambled slowly to the door, walking like a
living dishrag. In a bleak voice, he said, "There is no hope then. All
is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman."
He spoke in a drab monotone that almost, but not quite, had me weeping.
I watched him shuffle out. I do have
some
conscience, and I had the
uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to
commit suicide on my account.
About fifty more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life
started to get complicated again.
Nine of the fifty were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason
or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul for the
day so far was close to two dozen new life-forms under contract.
I had just about begun to forget about the incidents of the Kallerian's
outraged pride and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened
and the Earthman who called himself Ildwar Gorb of Wazzenazz XIII
stepped in.
"How did
you
get in here?" I demanded.
"Your man happened to be looking the wrong way," he said cheerily.
"Change your mind about me yet?"
"Get out before I have you thrown out."
Gorb shrugged. "I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed
my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazzenazz XIII, suppose I
tell you that I
am
Earthborn, and that I'm looking for a job on your
staff."
"I don't care
what
your story is! Get out or—"
"—you'll have me thrown out. Okay, okay. Just give me half a second.
Corrigan, you're no fool, and neither am I—but that fellow of yours
outside
is
. He doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many
times today has a life-form come in here unexpectedly?"
I scowled at him. "Too damn many."
"You see? He's incompetent. Suppose you fire him, take me on instead.
I've been living in the outworlds half my life; I know all there is to
know about alien life-forms. You can use me, Corrigan."
I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of
the office before I spoke. "Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is,
I've had a hard day. There's been a Kallerian in here who just about
threatened murder, and there's been a Stortulian in here who's about
to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling
me. But get this: I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up and
go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me.
I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to
claiming you're an unknown life-form from Wazzenazz XIII, the answer is
that I'm not looking for any of
those
either. Now will you scram or—"
The office door crashed open at that point and Heraal, the Kallerian,
came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering
metalfoil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster, he was wielding
a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinleck came
dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt.
"Sorry, Chief," Stebbins gasped. "I tried to keep him out, but—"
Heraal, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out
with a roar. "Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gursdrinn!"
Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to
let him have it at the first sight of actual violence.
Heraal boomed, "You are responsible for what is to happen now. I have
notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the
death of a life-form! Suffer, Earthborn ape! Suffer!"
"Watch it, Chief," Stebbins yelled. "He's going to—"
An instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the meshgun
trigger, Heraal swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it
savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the
sword projecting a couple of feet out of his back. A few driblets of
bluish-purple blood spread from beneath him.
Before I could react to the big life-form's hara-kiri, the office door
flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the
green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down
at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me.
"You are J. F. Corrigan?" the leader asked.
"Y-yes."
"We have received word of a complaint against you. Said complaint
being—"
"—that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the
untimely death of an intelligent life-form," filled in the second of
the Ghrynian policemen.
"The evidence lies before us," intoned the leader, "in the cadaver
of the unfortunate Kallerian who filed the complaint with us several
minutes ago."
"And therefore," said the third lizard, "it is our duty to arrest
you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than
$100,000 Galactic or two years in prison."
"Hold on!" I stormed. "You mean that any being from anywhere in the
Universe can come in here and gut himself on my carpet, and
I'm
responsible?"
"This is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to
this late life-form's request lies at the root of his sad demise?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Failure to deny is admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman."
Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them
away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred-grand fine, but it was
going to put an awful dent in this year's take. And I shuddered when I
remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stortulian was likely to
come bursting in here to kill himself too. Was it a fine of $100,000
per suicide? At that rate, I could be out of business by nightfall.
I was spared further such morbid thoughts by yet another unannounced
arrival.
The small figure of the Stortulian trudged through the open doorway
and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Ghrynian
policemen and my three assistants forgot the dead Kallerian for a
moment and turned to eye the newcomer.
I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Ghryne. I
resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again—or, if I
did
come, to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against
crackpots.
In heart-rending tones, the Stortulian declared, "Life is no longer
worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me
to do."
I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers
going down the drain. "Stop him, somebody! He's going to kill himself!
He's—"
Then somebody sprinted toward me, hit me amidships, and knocked me
flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the
meshgun. My head walloped the floor, and for five or six seconds, I
guess I wasn't fully aware of what was going on.
Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole
in the wall behind my desk; a smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I
saw the three Ghrynian policemen sitting on the raving Stortulian. The
man who called himself Ildwar Gorb was getting to his feet and dusting
himself off.
He helped me up. "Sorry to have had to tackle you, Corrigan. But that
Stortulian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get
you."
I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying
fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed
plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the
struggling little alien in an unbreakable tanglemesh.
"Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stortulian
psychology, Corrigan," Gorb said lightly. "Suicide is completely
abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who
caused their trouble. In this case, you."
I began to chuckle—more of a tension-relieving snicker than a
full-bodied laugh.
"Funny," I said.
"What is?" asked the self-styled Wazzenazzian.
"These aliens. Big blustery Heraal came in with murder in his eye and
killed
himself
, and the pint-sized Stortulian who looked so meek and
pathetic damn near blew my head off." I shuddered. "Thanks for the
tackle job."
"Don't mention it," Gorb said.
I glared at the Ghrynian police. "Well? What are you waiting for? Take
that murderous little beast out of here! Or isn't murder against the
local laws?"
"The Stortulian will be duly punished," replied the leader of the
Ghrynian cops calmly. "But there is the matter of the dead Kallerian
and the fine of—"
"—one hundred thousand dollars. I know." I groaned and turned to
Stebbins. "Get the Terran Consulate on the phone, Stebbins. Have them
send down a legal adviser. Find out if there's any way we can get out
of this mess with our skins intact."
"Right, Chief." Stebbins moved toward the visiphone.
Gorb stepped forward and put a hand on his chest.
"Hold it," the Wazzenazzian said crisply. "The Consulate can't help
you. I can."
"You?" I said.
"I can get you out of this cheap."
"
How
cheap?"
Gorb grinned rakishly. "Five thousand in cash plus a contract as a
specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a
lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it?"
I eyed Gorb uncertainly. The Terran Consulate people probably wouldn't
be much help; they tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they
were really serious, and I knew from past experiences that no officials
ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand,
giving this slyster a contract might be a risky proposition.
"Tell you what," I said finally. "You've got yourself a deal—but on
a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and
the contract. Otherwise, nothing."
Gorb shrugged. "What have I to lose?"
| What was shocking about the Stortulian's return to the interview office later in the day? | [
"His depression was building to a suicide attempt.",
"He had morphed into a larger being.",
"He was motivated to commit murder.",
"He was disguising himself as another being."
] | 2 | true |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why were the extraterrestrials not enchanted by Gabriel Lockard like the rest of the humans that were present? | [
"They were more enchanted by the girl with him.",
"They were too intoxicated to care.",
"They saw all humans as the same.",
"They found him appaling."
] | 2 | false |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why did most of the men and women have a young appearance? | [
"Because of science that could starve off decay.",
"Because of plastic surgery.",
"Because of the freeze in time.",
"Because of the allurement of the atmosphere."
] | 0 | false |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why did Gabe tell the girl that he was with that he had never before seen the nondescript man, though the two clearly knew each other? | [
"He had never met the man in person.",
"He had not actually seen that man with the new face",
"He had not wanted her to know the truth.",
"He had not recognized the man at that time, because of his intoxication."
] | 1 | true |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why was zarquil not played often by those in the area? | [
"It was an illegal game.",
"It was only played by Dutchmen.",
"It was fabulously expensive.",
"It was dangerous."
] | 0 | true |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why did the odd beings from the seventh plant only want interstellar credits? | [
"So that they could buy slaves.",
"So that they could return to Vinau and buy slaves.",
"To buy booze any time they desired.",
"So that they could return to Vinau."
] | 1 | false |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why was it unheard of to issue an effective prison sentence to the zarquil operators? | [
"The operators were above the law",
"The operators were too difficult to contain in a prison",
"The operators lived significantly long lives",
"The laws were difficult to enforce and harder to uphold"
] | 2 | false |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why was the ugly man constantly chasing after Gabe? | [
"He was actually after Gabe's wife.",
"He wanted his body back.",
"He wanted some of Gabe's money.",
"He was only following him by coincidence."
] | 1 | false |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| What was the purpose of the ugly man seeming to guard Gabe? | [
"He was actually guarding Gabe's wife.",
"He felt affection towards Gabe.",
"He chose to be near for money.",
"He didn't want his body damaged."
] | 3 | true |
Bodyguard
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMM
Illustrated by CAVAT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course
a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that
he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate!
The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did
the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in
the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.
Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the
humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and
arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior
to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was
accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was
almost ordinary-looking.
As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely
amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably
hideous.
Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a
short man standing next to the pair—young, as most men and women were
in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though
not death—but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic
surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.
The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his
clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather
ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one—or at least he felt
he was, which was what mattered.
"Sorry, colleague," Gabe said lazily. "All my fault. You must let me
buy you a replacement." He gestured to the bartender. "Another of the
same for my fellow-man here."
The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth
hastily supplied by the management.
"You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill," Gabe said, taking out
his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look
at them. "Here, have yourself a new suit on me."
You could use one
was implied.
And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance,
was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just
set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard's
handsome face.
Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. "Don't do that," the
nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed
the glass from the little man's slackening grasp. "You wouldn't want to
go to jail because of him."
The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces
now ranged against him—including his own belated prudence—were too
strong, he stumbled off. He hadn't really wanted to fight, only to
smash back, and now it was too late for that.
Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. "So, it's you again?"
The man in the gray suit smiled. "Who else in any world would stand up
for you?"
"I should think you'd have given up by now. Not that I mind having you
around, of course," Gabriel added too quickly. "You do come in useful
at times, you know."
"So you don't mind having me around?" The nondescript man smiled again.
"Then what are you running from, if not me? You can't be running from
yourself—you lost yourself a while back, remember?"
Gabe ran a hand through his thick blond hair. "Come on, have a drink
with me, fellow-man, and let's let bygones be bygones. I owe you
something—I admit that. Maybe we can even work this thing out."
"I drank with you once too often," the nondescript man said. "And
things worked out fine, didn't they? For you." His eyes studied the
other man's incredibly handsome young face, noted the suggestion of
bags under the eyes, the beginning of slackness at the lips, and were
not pleased with what they saw. "Watch yourself, colleague," he warned
as he left. "Soon you might not be worth the saving."
"Who was that, Gabe?" the girl asked.
He shrugged. "I never saw him before in my life." Of course, knowing
him, she assumed he was lying, but, as a matter of fact, just then he
happened to have been telling the truth.
Once the illuminators were extinguished in Gabriel Lockard's hotel
suite, it seemed reasonably certain to the man in the gray suit, as
he watched from the street, that his quarry would not go out again
that night. So he went to the nearest airstation. There he inserted a
coin in a locker, into which he put most of his personal possessions,
reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to
the letter combination
bodyguard
, he went out into the street.
If he had met with a fatal accident at that point, there would have
been nothing on his body to identify him. As a matter of fact, no real
identification was possible, for he was no one and had been no one for
years.
The nondescript man hailed a cruising helicab. "Where to, fellow-man?"
the driver asked.
"I'm new in the parish," the other man replied and let it hang there.
"Oh...? Females...? Narcophagi...? Thrill-mills?"
But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head.
"Games?" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was
wanted by then. "Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?"
"Is there a good zarquil game in town?"
The driver moved so he could see the face of the man behind him in the
teleview. A very ordinary face. "Look, colleague, why don't you commit
suicide? It's cleaner and quicker."
"I can't contact your attitude," the passenger said with a thin
smile. "Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it
happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a
thrill-mill." He gave a sigh that was almost an audible shudder, and
which the driver misinterpreted as an expression of ecstasy.
"Each time, eh? You're a dutchman then?" The driver spat out of the
window. "If it wasn't for the nibble, I'd throw you right out of the
cab. Without even bothering to take it down even. I hate dutchmen ...
anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em."
"But it would be silly to let personal prejudice stand in the way of a
commission, wouldn't it?" the other man asked coolly.
"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though."
"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun."
"You're the dictator," the driver agreed sullenly.
II
It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no
condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn.
"Let me take the controls, honey," the light-haired girl urged, but he
shook his handsome head.
"Show you I can do something 'sides look pretty," he said thickly,
referring to an earlier and not amicable conversation they had held,
and of which she still bore the reminder on one thickly made-up cheek.
Fortunately the car was flying low, contrary to regulations, so that
when they smashed into the beacon tower on the outskirts of the little
town, they didn't have far to fall. And hardly had their car crashed
on the ground when the car that had been following them landed, and a
short fat man was puffing toward them through the mist.
To the girl's indignation, the stranger not only hauled Gabe out onto
the dripping grass first, but stopped and deliberately examined the
young man by the light of his minilume, almost as if she weren't there
at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to
remember her existence. He pulled her away from the wreck just a moment
before the fuel tank exploded and the 'copter went up in flames.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw the fat man gazing down at him
speculatively. "My guardian angel," he mumbled—shock had sobered him
a little, but not enough. He sat up. "Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have
thrown me back in."
"And that's no joke," the fat man agreed.
The girl shivered and at that moment Gabriel suddenly seemed to recall
that he had not been alone. "How about Helen? She on course?"
"Seems to be," the fat man said. "You all right, miss?" he asked,
glancing toward the girl without, she thought, much apparent concern.
"
Mrs.
," Gabriel corrected. "Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Gabriel
Lockard," he said, bowing from his seated position toward the girl.
"Pretty bauble, isn't she?"
"I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard," the fat man said,
looking at her intently. His small eyes seemed to strip the make-up
from her cheek and examine the livid bruise underneath. "I hope
you'll be worthy of the name." The light given off by the flaming
car flickered on his face and Gabriel's and, she supposed, hers too.
Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them.
There were no public illuminators this far out—even in town the
lights were dimming and not being replaced fast enough nor by the
newer models. The town, the civilization, the planet all were old and
beginning to slide downhill....
Gabe gave a short laugh, for no reason that she could see.
There was the feeling that she had encountered the fat man before,
which was, of course, absurd. She had an excellent memory for faces and
his was not included in her gallery. The girl pulled her thin jacket
closer about her chilly body. "Aren't you going to introduce your—your
friend to me, Gabe?"
"I don't know who he is," Gabe said almost merrily, "except that he's
no friend of mine. Do you have a name, stranger?"
"Of course I have a name." The fat man extracted an identification
card from his wallet and read it. "Says here I'm Dominic Bianchi, and
Dominic Bianchi is a retail milgot dealer.... Only he isn't a retail
milgot dealer any more; the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks
ago, and now he isn't ... anything."
"You saved our lives," the girl said. "I'd like to give you some token
of my—of our appreciation." Her hand reached toward her credit-carrier
with deliberate insult. He might have saved her life, but only
casually, as a by-product of some larger scheme, and her appreciation
held little gratitude.
The fat man shook his head without rancor. "I have plenty of money,
thank you, Mrs. Gabriel Lockard.... Come," he addressed her husband,
"if you get up, I'll drive you home. I warn you, be more careful in the
future! Sometimes," he added musingly, "I almost wish you would let
something happen. Then my problem would not be any problem, would it?"
Gabriel shivered. "I'll be careful," he vowed. "I promise—I'll be
careful."
When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night,
the fat man checked his personal possessions. He then requested a taxi
driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the
commission phlegmatically. Perhaps he was more hardened than the others
had been; perhaps he was unaware that the fat man was not a desperate
or despairing individual seeking one last chance, but what was known
colloquially as a flying dutchman, a man, or woman, who went from
one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you
could call it that, for its own sake, and not for the futile hope it
extended and which was its sole shred of claim to moral justification.
Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care.
Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were
many legitimate citizens who weren't quite sure just what the word
implied, knowing merely that it was one of those nameless horrors so
deliciously hinted at by the fax sheets under the generic term of
"crimes against nature." Actually the phrase was more appropriate to
zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly
applied. And this was one crime—for it was crime in law as well as
nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator;
otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse.
Playing the game was fabulously expensive; it had to be to make it
profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's
seventh planet cared nothing for the welfare of the completely alien
human beings; all they wanted was to feather their own pockets with
interstellar credits, so that they could return to Vinau and buy many
slaves. For, on Vinau, bodies were of little account, and so to them
zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs.
Which was why they came to Terra to make profits—there has never been
big money in musical chairs as such.
When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as
they had strange powers, which, not being definable, were beyond the
law—they suffered their sentences with equanimity. No Earth court
could give an effective prison sentence to a creature whose life
spanned approximately two thousand terrestrial years. And capital
punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the
terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons
could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired
after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because
trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between
Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance
of apparently respectable citizens of a friendly planet.
The taxi driver took the fat man to one of the rather seedy locales in
which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to
conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible.
But the front door swung open on an interior that lacked the opulence
of the usual Vinoz set-up; it was down-right shabby, the dim olive
light hinting of squalor rather than forbidden pleasures. That was
the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting
involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened.
The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but,
when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into
darkside practices. Naturally the small-town houses were more likely to
have trouble in making ends meet, because everybody in the parish knew
everybody else far too well.
The fat man wondered whether that had been his quarry's motive in
coming to such desolate, off-trail places—hoping that eventually
disaster would hit the one who pursued him. Somehow, such a plan seemed
too logical for the man he was haunting.
However, beggars could not be choosers. The fat man paid off the
heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. "One?" the small green
creature in the slightly frayed robe asked.
"One," the fat man answered.
III
The would-be thief fled down the dark alley, with the hot bright rays
from the stranger's gun lancing out after him in flamboyant but futile
patterns. The stranger, a thin young man with delicate, angular
features, made no attempt to follow. Instead, he bent over to examine
Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. "Only
weighted out," he muttered, "he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you
two to come out to a place like this?"
"I really think Gabriel
must
be possessed...." the girl said, mostly
to herself. "I had no idea of the kind of place it was going to be
until he brought me here. The others were bad, but this is even worse.
It almost seems as if he went around looking for trouble, doesn't it?"
"It does indeed," the stranger agreed, coughing a little. It was
growing colder and, on this world, the cities had no domes to protect
them from the climate, because it was Earth and the air was breathable
and it wasn't worth the trouble of fixing up.
The girl looked closely at him. "You look different, but you
are
the
same man who pulled us out of that aircar crash, aren't you? And before
that the man in the gray suit? And before that...?"
The young man's cheekbones protruded as he smiled. "Yes, I'm all of
them."
"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people
who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?" Automatically she
reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale
hair, for she was always conscious of her appearance; if she had not
been so before marriage, Gabriel would have taught her that.
He smiled again, but coughed instead of speaking.
"But why do you do it?
Why!
Do you like it? Or is it because of
Gabriel?" She was growing a little frantic; there was menace here
and she could not understand it nor determine whether or not she was
included in its scope. "Do you want to keep him from recognizing you;
is that it?"
"Ask him."
"He won't tell me; he never tells me anything. We just keep running. I
didn't recognize it as running at first, but now I realize that's what
we've been doing ever since we were married. And running from you, I
think?"
There was no change of expression on the man's gaunt face, and she
wondered how much control he had over a body that, though second- or
third- or fourth-hand, must be new to him. How well could he make it
respond? What was it like to step into another person's casing? But she
must not let herself think that way or she would find herself looking
for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not,
she thought, the best way; her body was much too good a one to risk so
casually.
It was beginning to snow. Light, feathery flakes drifted down on her
husband's immobile body. She pulled her thick coat—of fur taken from
some animal who had lived and died light-years away—more closely about
herself. The thin young man began to cough again.
Overhead a tiny star seemed to detach itself from the pale flat disk
of the Moon and hurl itself upward—one of the interstellar ships
embarking on its long voyage to distant suns. She wished that somehow
she could be on it, but she was here, on this solitary old world in a
barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who
followed them, and it looked as if here she would stay ... all three of
them would stay....
"If you're after Gabriel, planning to hurt him," she asked, "why then
do you keep helping him?"
"I am not helping
him
. And he knows that."
"You'll change again tonight, won't you?" she babbled. "You always
change after you ... meet us? I think I'm beginning to be able to
identify you now, even when you're ... wearing a new body; there's
something about you that doesn't change."
"Too bad he got married," the young man said. "I could have followed
him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out
from the crowd. Too bad he got married anyway," he added, his voice
less impersonal, "for your sake."
She had come to the same conclusion in her six months of marriage, but
she would not admit that to an outsider. Though this man was hardly an
outsider; he was part of their small family group—as long as she had
known Gabriel, so long he must have known her. And she began to suspect
that he was even more closely involved than that.
"Why must you change again?" she persisted, obliquely approaching the
subject she feared. "You have a pretty good body there. Why run the
risk of getting a bad one?"
"This isn't a good body," he said. "It's diseased. Sure, nobody's
supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical
examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading
me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty
of foliage."
"How—long will it last you?"
"Four or five months, if I'm careful." He smiled. "But don't worry, if
that's what you're doing; I'll get it passed on before then. It'll be
expensive—that's all. Bad landing for the guy who gets it, but then
it was tough on me too, wasn't it?"
"But how did you get into this ... pursuit?" she asked again. "And why
are you doing it?" People didn't have any traffic with Gabriel Lockard
for fun, not after they got to know him. And this man certainly should
know him better than most.
"Ask your husband."
The original Gabriel Lockard looked down at the prostrate,
snow-powdered figure of the man who had stolen his body and his name,
and stirred it with his toe. "I'd better call a cab—he might freeze to
death."
He signaled and a cab came.
"Tell him, when he comes to," he said to the girl as he and the driver
lifted the heavy form of her husband into the helicar, "that I'm
getting pretty tired of this." He stopped for a long spell of coughing.
"Tell him that sometimes I wonder whether cutting off my nose wouldn't,
in the long run, be most beneficial for my face."
"Sorry," the Vinzz said impersonally, in English that was perfect
except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, "but I'm afraid you
cannot play."
"Why not?" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes.
"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house."
"But I have plenty of money." The young man coughed. The Vinzz
shrugged. "I'll pay you twice the regular fee."
The green one shook his head. "Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This
game is really clean."
"In a town like this?"
"That is the reason we can afford to be honest." The Vinzz' tendrils
quivered in what the man had come to recognize as amusement through
long, but necessarily superficial acquaintance with the Vinzz. His
heavy robe of what looked like moss-green velvet, but might have been
velvet-green moss, encrusted with oddly faceted alien jewels, swung
with him.
"We do a lot of business here," he said unnecessarily, for the whole
set-up spelled wealth far beyond the dreams of the man, and he was by
no means poor when it came to worldly goods. "Why don't you try another
town where they're not so particular?"
The young man smiled wryly. Just his luck to stumble on a sunny game.
He never liked to risk following his quarry in the same configuration.
And even though only the girl had actually seen him this time, he
wouldn't feel at ease until he had made the usual body-shift. Was
he changing because of Gabriel, he wondered, or was he using his own
discoverment and identification simply as an excuse to cover the fact
that none of the bodies that fell to his lot ever seemed to fit him?
Was he activated solely by revenge or as much by the hope that in the
hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day
win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original
casing had?
He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he
would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl,
seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened
and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that
the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand
how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of
information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they
detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it
happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions
to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good
health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured
aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate
standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the
curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it
kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had
also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials
exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or
biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever
been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body,
Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held
its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite
being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had
been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on
Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was,
"Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take
such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."
"Why, that's three times the usual rate!"
"The other will pay five times the usual rate."
"Oh, all right," the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific
risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he
himself would, upon assuming the body, assume responsibility for all
the crimes it had committed. But there was nothing else he could do.
He looked at himself in the mirror and found he had a fine new body;
tall and strikingly handsome in a dark, coarse-featured way. Nothing to
match the one he had lost, in his opinion, but there were probably many
people who might find this one preferable. No identification in the
pockets, but it wasn't necessary; he recognized the face. Not that it
was a very famous or even notorious one, but the dutchman was a careful
student of the "wanted" fax that had decorated public buildings from
time immemorial, for he was ever mindful of the possibility that he
might one day find himself trapped unwittingly in the body of one of
the men depicted there. And he knew that this particular man, though
not an important criminal in any sense of the word, was one whom the
police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital
punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the
man in question was not one who would let himself be captured easily,
nor whom the police intended to capture easily.
This might be a lucky break for me after all
, the new tenant thought,
as he tried to adjust himself to the body. It, too, despite its obvious
rude health, was not a very comfortable fit.
I can do a lot with a
hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner; maybe
I'll be able to get away with it.
IV
"Look, Gabe," the girl said, "don't try to fool me! I know you
too well. And I know you have that man's—the real Gabriel
Lockard's—body." She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she
watched her husband's reflection in the dressing table mirror.
Lockard—Lockard's body, at any rate—sat up and felt his unshaven
chin. "That what he tell you?"
"No, he didn't tell me anything really—just suggested I ask you
whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he
obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to
see his body spoiled."
"It
is
a pretty good body, isn't it?" Gabe flexed softening muscles
and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved
at having someone with whom to share his secret.
"Not as good as it must have been," the girl said, turning and looking
at him without admiration. "Not if you keep on the way you're coursing.
Gabe, why don't you...?"
"Give it back to him, eh?" Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd be
his
wife then. That would be
nice—a sound mind in a sound body. But don't you think that's a little
more than you deserve?"
"I wasn't thinking about that, Gabe," she said truthfully enough, for
she hadn't followed the idea to its logical conclusion. "Of course I'd
go with you," she went on, now knowing she lied, "when you got your ...
old body back."
Sure
, she thought,
I'd keep going with you to farjeen houses and
thrill-mills.
Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only
once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go
with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash
that experience from her mind or her body.
"You wouldn't be able to get your old body back, though, would you?"
she went on. "You don't know where it's gone, and neither, I suppose,
does he?"
"I don't want to know!" he spat. "I wouldn't want it if I could get
it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he
looked in a mirror." He swung long legs over the side of his bed.
"Christ, anything would be better than that! You can't imagine what a
hulk I had!"
"Oh, yes, I can," she said incautiously. "You must have had a body to
match your character. Pity you could only change one."
| Why must only the healthy play zarquil? | [
"Only healthy bodies can be accepted in the games.",
"The games are dangerous and only those in the best health can survive.",
"Health is a form of wealth in the game of zarquil.",
"There are no health restrictions on the game."
] | 0 | true |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Who was talking to Jerome in the very beginning of the passage? | [
"Jerome, from 30 years in the past",
"Jerome, from 10 years in the past",
"Jerome, from 10 years in the future",
"Jerome, from 30 years in the future"
] | 3 | false |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Why is there no feeling of acceleration in the elevator in the future? | [
"The force is too fast to be felt.",
"The elevator doesn't actually move, only the scenery does.",
"It's moving slower in opposition to the gravity.",
"The false gravity used in the interstellar civilization."
] | 3 | false |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Why was Jerome stopped by the police while running? | [
"He had been stealing",
"The cop had just saw the futuristic version of him.",
"There are laws again st exerting yourself in heat",
"He was presenting him with a yellow sticker."
] | 2 | false |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| What can be determined about the language used in the futuristic civilization that Jerome visits? | [
"They are lazy, based on the slurring and laws against physical exertion.",
"They are all drunks, based on the slurring.",
"They are all moving at a snail pace, based on the slurring and relaxed tempers.",
"They are all in a hurry, based on the slurring."
] | 0 | true |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Why was futuristic Jerome so sure that past Jerome would invite him inside? | [
"Because he himself had done so already.",
"Because he can see into the future.",
"Because he knows that his decisions have been altered by the machine.",
"Because he can hear the inner thoughts of his mind"
] | 0 | false |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Why is the air inside the machine not stale on the return trip like it had been on the prior trip? | [
"Because the generator is working and clearing the air.",
"Because there is a clearer air flow now with the retrieval of the generator.",
"Because no one is smoking inside the machine.",
"Because there is only one Jerome smoking inside the machine."
] | 3 | true |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| What was surprising to Jerome about the papers that were retrieved with the generator? | [
"They were all in his own handwriting.",
"They were copies of what he already had at home.",
"They were exact duplicates for what the futuristic Jerome had brought when he visited.",
"They were forged."
] | 0 | false |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Why is Jerome in search of the museum in the futuristic civilization? | [
"That's where the guard who has information on the generator is located.",
"That's where the generator is held.",
"That's where the information for the real inventor is located.",
"That's where the guard who has information on the real inventory of the generator is located."
] | 1 | false |
... and it comes out here
By LESTER DEL REY
Illustrated by DON SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There is one fact no sane man can quarrel
with ... everything has a beginning and an end.
But some men aren't sane; thus it isn't always so!
No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit
like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in.
You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always
have ... or do ... or will. I don't know, verbs get all mixed up. We
don't have the right attitude toward tenses for a situation like this.
Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did, so you will.
Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but you'll find out you
aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the
machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's
hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used
to it, of course, but it will take about thirty years.
You're wondering whether to give me a drink, as I remember it. Why not?
And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for
me as you're having. Of course we have the same tastes—we're the same
person. I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just
how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or
we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more
years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date, if you still doubt
my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter.
Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself
for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two
of the same people. You
sense
things. So I'll simply go ahead talking
for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come
along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling
what happened to me; but he—I—told me what I was going to do, so I
might as well do the same. I probably couldn't help telling you the
same thing in the same words, even if I tried—and I don't intend to
try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this.
So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me.
You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty
obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen
it, just a small little cage with two seats, a luggage compartment, and
a few buttons on a dash. You'll be puzzling over what I'll tell you,
and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes
atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man
who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but
you'll want to go along.
I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I
cut off your questions, and get you inside. I snap on a green button,
and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of
foggy nothing surrounding the cockpit; it is probably the field that
prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section
isn't protected, though.
You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button,
and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but
it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there—in fact, there is no
there
. You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can
guess how things are.
You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out
through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out,
all right, but nothing happens. Where the screen ends, your hand just
turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt, and when you pull your
arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening
and you don't try it again.
Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time.
You turn to me, getting used to the idea. "So this is the fourth
dimension?" you ask.
Then you feel silly, because you'll remember that I said you'd ask
that. Well, I asked it after I was told, then I came back and told it
to you, and I still can't help answering when you speak.
"Not exactly," I try to explain. "Maybe it's no dimension—or it might
be the fifth; if you're going to skip over the so-called fourth without
traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent
the machine and I don't understand it."
"But...."
I let it go, and so do you. If you don't, it's a good way of going
crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of
course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have
been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first,
then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and
saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once
that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space
dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got
bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier
for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as
I did—and you will—you get further and further from an answer.
Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time,
apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space.
You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either
carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small
increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't
think about that then, either.
I'm smoking, and so are you, and the air in the machine is getting a
bit stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide
open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss.
"Where are we getting our air?" you ask. "Or why don't we lose it?"
"No place for it to go," I explain. There isn't. Out there is neither
time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel
gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a
gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is
responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the
idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still.
Then the machine stops—at least, the field around us cuts off. You
feel a dankish sort of air replace the stale air, and you breathe
easier, though we're in complete darkness, except for the weak light in
the machine, which always burns, and a few feet of rough dirty cement
floor around. You take another cigaret from me and you get out of the
machine, just as I do.
I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort
of simple, short-limbed, one-piece affair I put on, but it feels
comfortable.
"I'm staying here," I tell you. "This is like the things they wear in
this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to
pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that
atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some
identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they
still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a
pretty easygoing civilization, from what I could see. We'll go up and
I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here, so I won't be coming
back with you."
You nod, remembering I've told you about it. "What century is this,
anyway?"
I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. "As near as I can guess,
it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an
interstellar civilization."
You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small
flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor.
This is a sub-sub-sub-basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs,
and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open.
"What about the time machine?" you ask.
"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe."
We get in the elevator, and I say "first" to it. It gives out a
coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's
no feeling of acceleration—some kind of false gravity they use in the
future. Then the door opens, and the elevator says "first" back at us.
It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor, with
nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. "You go that way. Don't
worry about getting lost; you never did, so you can't. Find the museum,
grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you."
You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream.
You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later,
you see me going by, mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward
a restaurant, or something like it, that is just opening. I'm asking
questions of a man, who points, and I turn and move off.
You come out of the side corridor and go down a hall, away from the
restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at
them, realizing for the first time that things have changed.
Steij:neri, Faunten, Z:rgat Dispenseri.
The signs are very quiet and
dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains,
and the like. What a zergot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign
that announces:
Trav:l Biwrou—F:rst-Clas Twrz—Marz, Viin*s, and
x: Trouj:n Planets. Spej:l reits tu aol s*nz wixin 60 lyt iirz!
But
there is only a single picture of a dull-looking metal sphere, with
passengers moving up a ramp, and the office is closed. You begin to get
the hang of the spelling they use, though.
Now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you.
Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard-skin
suit; you'd figure it was some part in a play and let it go. Well,
people don't change much.
You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might
be papers on tapes.
"Where can I find the Museum of Science?"
"Downayer rien turn lefa the sign. Stoo bloss," he tells you. Around
you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using
stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know.
You go right until you find a big sign built into the rubbery surface
of the walk:
Miuzi:m *v Syens
. There's an arrow pointing and you turn
left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you can see a pink building, with
faint aqua trimming, bigger than most of the others. They are building
lower than they used to, apparently. Twenty floors up seems about the
maximum. You head for it, and find the sidewalk is marked with the
information that it is the museum.
You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You
hesitate for a moment, then. You're beginning to think the whole affair
is complete nonsense, and you should get back to the time machine and
go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs
in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other
guard.
What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort
of drawl, with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather
pleasant.
"Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in 'Atoms and
Axioms.' The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study
whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice."
"Thanks," you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce
guards as polite as that. "I—I'm told I should investigate your
display of atomic generators."
He beams at that. "Of course." The gate is swung to behind you, but
obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a
lock. "Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight
of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got
the original of the first thirteen models. Professor Jonas was using
them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could
not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though.
Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a
hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period.
Oh—congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our
oldest tapes."
You get away from him, finally, after some polite thanks. The building
seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your
right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly
plastic diamond former, and you go up to it. As you come near, it
goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row
of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny
toward you.
"Souvenir," it announces in a well-modulated voice. "This is a typical
gem of the twentieth century, properly cut to 58 facets, known
technically as a Jaegger diamond, and approximately twenty carats
in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during
morning hours for one-tenth credit. If you have more than one child,
press the red button for the number of stones you desire."
You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the
corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of
spaceships—from the original thing that looks like a V-2, and is
labeled first Lunar rocket, to a ten-foot globe, complete with
miniature manikins—are sailing about in some kind of orbits. Then
there is one labeled
Wep:nz
, filled with everything from a crossbow
to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil,
marked
Fynal Hand Arm
. Beyond is the end of the corridor, and a big
place that bears a sign,
Mad:lz *v Atamic Pau:r Sorsez
.
By that time, you're almost convinced. And you've been doing a lot of
thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling has been sinking
in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it.
You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a
lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order,
and the latest one, marked
2147—Rincs Dyn*pat:
, is about the size
of a desk telephone. The earlier ones are larger, of course, clumsier,
but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign
on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on atomic generators, explaining
that this is the first invention which leaped full blown into basically
final form.
You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving
his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that
everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the
fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator
built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation,
and full patent application.
They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel,
producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any
chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles,
and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being
fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the
outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being
investigated, and that only such refinements as better alloys and the
addition of magnetric and nucleatric current outlets have been added
since the original.
So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's simply a square box
with a huge plug on each side, and a set of vernier controls on top,
plus a little hole marked, in old-style spelling,
Drop BBs or wire
here
. Apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on
each side.
"Nice," the guard says over your shoulder. "It finally wore out one of
the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly
as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever.
Like to have me tell you about it?"
"Not particularly," you begin, and then realize bad manners might be
conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls
something out of his pocket and stares at it.
"Fine, fine. The mayor of Altasecarba—Centaurian, you know—is
arriving, but I'll be back in about ten minutes. He wants to examine
some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared
to nineteenth century man. You'll pardon me?"
You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up
to the head of the line, to that Rinks Dynapattuh, or whatever it
transliterates to. That's small and you can carry it. But the darned
thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge
it, either.
You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you
can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or
some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But
they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect.
And, finally, you're right back beside the original first model. It's
probably bolted down, too, but you try it tentatively and you find it
moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch
it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed.
Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I
haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing.
You lift it; it only weighs about fifty pounds! Naturally, it can be
carried.
You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact,
if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time
machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will
happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a
lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But
maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered,
after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I
probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say.
Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all
seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend
down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing
happens, though.
You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the
world on your back, and still nothing happens. Ahead of you, the gate
is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe
a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street.
Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in
front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past
people, who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see.
There's another yell behind you.
Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front
of your feet, with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out
about that, either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you
dart past.
The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms
seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting
heavier at every step.
Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and
on the beefy side appears—and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop
catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop.
"You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow," the cop
says. "There are laws against that, without a yellow sticker. Here, let
me grab you a taxi."
Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake
your head and come up for air.
"I—I left my money home," you begin.
The cop nods. "Oh, that explains it. Fine, I won't have to give you
an appearance schedule. But you should have come to me." He reaches
out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. "Sir, an emergency
request. Would you help this gentleman?"
The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. "How far?"
You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you
mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other
side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him.
Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the
street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming
at you both.
That way, it isn't so bad. And you begin to see why I decided I might
like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation
here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there
before you.
And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building as you reach
it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod
at him, not waiting for thanks. And the guard comes up, holding some
dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too
dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck.
"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications," he says.
"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A
good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in
this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and
we'll pick it up."
You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before, and
take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps
you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems
to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction
and heads back to the museum.
You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and
the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator.
There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there.
You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is
right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were.
Then there's a sort of cough and something dilates in the wall. It
forms a perfect door and the elevator stands there waiting. You get in,
gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how
a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What
the deuce would that lowest basement be called? But the elevator has
closed and is moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again and you're at
the original level. You get out—and realize you don't have a light.
You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back
in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering
here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then
a shred of dim light appears; it's the weak light in the time machine.
You've located it.
You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers
down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You
reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one
beside it and you finally decide on that.
Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator
and a beam of light strikes against your eyes, with a shout punctuating
it. Your finger touches the red button.
You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally
doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying
to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around
you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't
been used so far—sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of
light, you can't hear a thing, and you're safe.
It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your
nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons, with
some pencil marks over them—"Press these to return to yourself 30
years"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't
because there is only one of you this time.
Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in
your own back yard.
You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the
machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement,
land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up
yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then,
you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic
generator and taking it inside.
It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing; just some
plates of metal, some spiral coils, and a few odds and ends—all
things that can be made easily enough, all obviously of common metals.
But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice
something.
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one—after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back—or right now, from your
view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
| Why did Jerome not stop when he was being shouted at when leaving the futuristic civilization? | [
"He was unsure what they wanted and didn't want to wait and find out.",
"He knew they had caught on to his actions.",
"He was fearing being held there for theft.",
"He knew they were going to switch the generator with another"
] | 0 | false |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| Why are they hunting the farn beast? | [
"This is a vacation hunting trip for Extrone.",
"They are hunting the farn beasts because farn beasts are dangerous.",
"Farn beasts are dangerous creatures that must be eliminated.",
"Farn beasts are delicious."
] | 0 | true |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| How does Ri feel about Extrone? | [
"Ri thinks Extrone is the kind of ruler the system needs.",
"Ri hates Extrone and is planning on killing him at the first opportunity.",
"Ri is frightened that Extrone is going to kill him.",
"Ri is frightened of Extrone, but he doesn't think Extrone will kill him."
] | 3 | false |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| How does Mia feel about Extrone? | [
"Mia is frightened of Extrone, but he doesn't think Extrone will kill him.",
"Mia hates Extrone and is planning on killing him at the first opportunity.",
"Mia is frightened that Extrone is going to kill him.",
"Mia thinks Extrone is the kind of ruler the system needs."
] | 2 | false |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| Why are Ri and Mia afraid of Extrone? | [
"Extrone is a ruthless and powerful overlord.",
"Extrone is an evil, hulking demon.",
"Extrone has immense power and can kill them with just a look.",
"Extrone is four times their size."
] | 0 | false |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| How does Lin feel about Extrone? | [
"Mia is frightened of Extrone, but he doesn't think Extrone will kill him.",
"Lin hates Extrone and is planning on killing him at the first opportunity.",
"Lin thinks Extrone is the kind of ruler the system needs.",
"Lin is frightened that Extrone is going to kill him."
] | 2 | true |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| If Mia is wealthy enough to buy half the planet why is he Extrone's guide? | [
"Extrone threatened to kill Mia's family if Mia didn't act as his guide.",
"Extrone found out Mia had hunted farn beasts previously and demanded Mia act as his guide.",
"Extrone kidnapped Mia, and is forcing Mia to act as his guide.",
"Extrone is the sovereign, everyone must do as Extrone commands."
] | 3 | true |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| Who is Extrone? | [
"Extrone is the leader of the Ninth Fleet.",
"Extrone is an evil warlord.",
"Extrone is the ruler of this system.",
"Extrone is the leader of the rebellion."
] | 2 | true |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| Why doesn't Extrone shoot the farn beasts? | [
"Extrone wants to watch the farn beasts kill Ri.",
"Extrone wants to capture the farn beasts alive.",
"Extrone doesn't shoot as he is paralyzed with fear at the sight of the farn beasts.",
"Extrone doesn't shoot because he is afraid he will hit Ri instead of the farn beasts."
] | 0 | true |
HUNT the HUNTER
BY KRIS NEVILLE
Illustrated by ELIZABETH MacINTYRE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course using live bait is the best
way to lure dangerous alien animals ...
unless it turns out that you are the bait!
"We're somewhat to the south, I think," Ri said, bending over the crude
field map. "That ridge," he pointed, "on our left, is right here." He
drew a finger down the map. "It was over here," he moved the finger,
"over the ridge, north of here, that we sighted them."
Extrone asked, "Is there a pass?"
Ri looked up, studying the terrain. He moved his shoulders. "I don't
know, but maybe they range this far. Maybe they're on this side of the
ridge, too."
Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. "I'd hate to lose a day
crossing the ridge," he said.
"Yes, sir," Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. "Listen!"
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"Hear it? That cough? I think that's one, from over there. Right up
ahead of us."
Extrone raised his eyebrows.
This time, the coughing roar was more distant, but distinct.
"It is!" Ri said. "It's a farn beast, all right!"
Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. "I'm
glad we won't have to cross the ridge."
Ri wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. "Yes, sir."
"We'll pitch camp right here, then," Extrone said. "We'll go after it
tomorrow." He looked at the sky. "Have the bearers hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Ri moved away, his pulse gradually slowing. "You, there!" he called.
"Pitch camp, here!"
He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's
party as guides. Once more, Ri addressed the bearers, "Be quick, now!"
And to Mia, "God almighty, he was getting mad." He ran a hand under his
collar. "It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd
hate to think of making him climb that ridge."
Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. "It's that damned pilot's
fault for setting us down on this side. I told him it was the other
side. I told him so."
Ri shrugged hopelessly.
Mia said, "I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he
wanted to get us in trouble."
"There shouldn't be one. There shouldn't be a blast area on this side
of the ridge, too."
"That's what I mean. The pilot don't like businessmen. He had it in for
us."
Ri cleared his throat nervously. "Maybe you're right."
"It's the Hunting Club he don't like."
"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast," Ri said. "At least,
then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody
else?"
Mia looked at his companion. He spat. "What hurts most, he pays us for
it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less
than I pay my secretary."
"Well, anyway, we won't have to cross that ridge."
"Hey, you!" Extrone called.
The two of them turned immediately.
"You two scout ahead," Extrone said. "See if you can pick up some
tracks."
"Yes, sir," Ri said, and instantly the two of them readjusted their
shoulder straps and started off.
Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. "Let's
wait here," Mia said.
"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in."
They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not
professional guides.
"We don't want to get too near," Ri said after toiling through the
forest for many minutes. "Without guns, we don't want to get near
enough for the farn beast to charge us."
They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging.
"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him," Mia said. "But we go
it alone. Damn him."
Ri twisted his mouth into a sour frown. He wiped at his forehead. "Hot.
By God, it's hot. I didn't think it was this hot, the first time we
were here."
Mia said, "The first time,
we
weren't guides. We didn't notice it so
much then."
They fought a few yards more into the forest.
Then it ended. Or, rather, there was a wide gap. Before them lay a
blast area, unmistakable. The grass was beginning to grow again, but
the tree stumps were roasted from the rocket breath.
"This isn't ours!" Ri said. "This looks like it was made nearly a year
ago!"
Mia's eyes narrowed. "The military from Xnile?"
"No," Ri said. "They don't have any rockets this small. And I don't
think there's another cargo rocket on this planet outside of the one we
leased from the Club. Except the one
he
brought."
"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?" Mia
asked. "You think it's their blast?"
"So?" Ri said. "But who are they?"
It was Mia's turn to shrug. "Whoever they were, they couldn't have been
hunters. They'd have kept the secret better."
"We didn't do so damned well."
"We didn't have a chance," Mia objected. "Everybody and his brother had
heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't
our fault Extrone found out."
"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of
us."
Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. "We should have shot our pilot,
too. That was our mistake. The pilot must have been the one who told
Extrone we'd hunted this area."
"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that."
"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to
the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute."
There was perspiration on Ri's upper lip.
"
I
didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking," Mia said.
Ri's mouth twisted. "I didn't say you did."
"Listen," Mia said in a hoarse whisper. "I just thought. Listen. To
hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us,
too, when the hunt's over."
Ri licked his lips. "No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just
anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even
him
. And besides,
why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too
many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself."
Mia said, "I hope you're right." They stood side by side, studying the
blast area in silence. Finally, Mia said, "We better be getting back."
"What'll we tell him?"
"That we saw tracks. What else can we tell him?"
They turned back along their trail, stumbling over vines.
"It gets hotter at sunset," Ri said nervously.
"The breeze dies down."
"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There
must be a lot of them, to be on both sides of the ridge like this."
"There may be a pass," Mia said, pushing a vine away.
Ri wrinkled his brow, panting. "I guess that's it. If there were a lot
of them, we'd have heard something before we did. But even so, it's
damned funny, when you think about it."
Mia looked up at the darkening sky. "We better hurry," he said.
When it came over the hastily established camp, the rocket was low,
obviously looking for a landing site. It was a military craft, from the
outpost on the near moon, and forward, near the nose, there was the
blazoned emblem of the Ninth Fleet. The rocket roared directly over
Extrone's tent, turned slowly, spouting fuel expensively, and settled
into the scrub forest, turning the vegetation beneath it sere by its
blasts.
Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat
disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers.
Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking
officers came out of the forest, heading toward him. They were spruce,
the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and
knees almost stiff.
"What in hell do you want?" Extrone asked.
They stopped a respectful distance away. "Sir...." one began.
"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?" Extrone
demanded, ominously not raising his voice.
"Sir," the lead officer said, "it's another alien ship. It was sighted
a few hours ago, off this very planet, sir."
Extrone's face looked much too innocent. "How did it get there,
gentlemen? Why wasn't it destroyed?"
"We lost it again, sir. Temporarily, sir."
"So?" Extrone mocked.
"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could
locate and destroy it."
Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned
away, in the direction of a resting bearer. "You!" he said. "Hey! Bring
me a drink!" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. "I'm
staying here."
The lead officer licked his firm lower lip. "But, sir...."
Extrone toyed with his beard. "About a year ago, gentlemen, there was
an alien ship around here then, wasn't there? And you destroyed it,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir."
"You'll destroy this one, too," Extrone said.
"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a
long range bombardment, sir."
Extrone said, "To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here.
And they probably couldn't hit this area if they did know. And you
can't afford to let them get a shot at me, anyway."
"That's why we'd like you to return to an inner planet, sir."
Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. "You'll
lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen.
I'm quite safe here, I think."
The bearer brought Extrone his drink.
"Get off," Extrone said quietly to the four officers.
Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back.
Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the
tangle of forest.
Dusk was falling. The takeoff blast of the rocket illuminated the area,
casting weird shadows on the gently swaying grasses; there was a hot
breath of dry air and the rocket dwindled toward the stars.
Extrone stood up lazily, stretching. He tossed the empty glass away,
listened for it to shatter. He reached out, parted the heavy flap to
his tent.
"Sir?" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness.
"Eh?" Extrone said, turning, startled. "Oh, you. Well?"
"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east."
Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, "You killed one, I believe, on
your
trip?"
Ri shifted. "Yes, sir."
Extrone held back the flap of the tent. "Won't you come in?" he asked
without any politeness whatever.
Ri obeyed the order.
The inside of the tent was luxurious. The bed was of bulky feathers,
costly of transport space, the sleep curtains of silken gauze. The
floor, heavy, portable tile blocks, not the hollow kind, were neatly
and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the
left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals.
They tinkled lightly when Extrone dropped the flap. The light was
electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to
the bed, sat down.
"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?" he said.
"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir."
Extrone narrowed his eyes. "I see by your eyes that you are
envious—that is the word, isn't it?—of my tent."
Ri looked away from his face.
"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have
never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't
seen
a farn beast."
Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's
glittering ones. "Few people have seen them, sir."
"Oh?" Extrone questioned mildly. "I wouldn't say that. I understand
that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their
planets."
"I meant in our system, sir."
"Of course you did," Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his
sleeve with his forefinger. "I imagine these are the only farn beasts
in our system."
Ri waited uneasily, not answering.
"Yes," Extrone said, "I imagine they are. It would have been a shame if
you had killed the last one. Don't you think so?"
Ri's hands worried the sides of his outer garment. "Yes, sir. It would
have been."
Extrone pursed his lips. "It wouldn't have been very considerate of you
to—But, still, you gained valuable experience. I'm glad you agreed to
come along as my guide."
"It was an honor, sir."
Extrone's lip twisted in wry amusement. "If I had waited until it was
safe for me to hunt on an alien planet, I would not have been able to
find such an illustrious guide."
"... I'm flattered, sir."
"Of course," Extrone said. "But you should have spoken to me about it,
when you discovered the farn beast in our own system."
"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity,
sir...."
"Of course," Extrone said dryly. "Like all of my subjects," he waved
his hand in a broad gesture, "the highest as well as the lowest slave,
know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best."
Ri squirmed, his face pale. "We do indeed love you, sir."
Extrone bent forward. "
Know
me and love me."
"Yes, sir.
Know
you and love you, sir," Ri said.
"Get out!" Extrone said.
"It's frightening," Ri said, "to be that close to him."
Mia nodded.
The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree,
were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and
bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a
central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.
"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what
we've read about."
Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. "You begin to
understand a lot of things, after seeing him."
Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.
"It makes you think," Mia added. He twitched. "I'm afraid. I'm afraid
he'll.... Listen, we'll talk. When we get back to civilization. You,
me, the bearers. About him. He can't let that happen. He'll kill us
first."
Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. "No. We have friends. We have
influence. He couldn't just like that—"
"He could say it was an accident."
"No," Ri said stubbornly.
"He can say anything," Mia insisted. "He can make people believe
anything. Whatever he says. There's no way to check on it."
"It's getting cold," Ri said.
"Listen," Mia pleaded.
"No," Ri said. "Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen.
Everybody would
know
we were lying. Everything they've come to
believe would tell them we were lying. Everything they've read, every
picture they've seen. They wouldn't believe us.
He
knows that."
"Listen," Mia repeated intently. "This is important. Right now he
couldn't afford to let us talk. Not right now. Because the Army is
not against him. Some officers were here, just before we came back. A
bearer overheard them talking. They don't
want
to overthrow him!"
Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering.
"That's another lie," Mia continued. "That he protects the people from
the Army. That's a lie. I don't believe they were
ever
plotting
against him. Not even at first. I think they
helped
him, don't you
see?"
Ri whined nervously.
"It's like this," Mia said. "I see it like this. The Army
put
him in
power when the people were in rebellion against military rule."
Ri swallowed. "We couldn't make the people believe that."
"No?" Mia challenged. "Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow?
You'll see. Because I think the Army is getting ready to invade the
alien system!"
"The people won't support them," Ri answered woodenly.
"
Think.
If he tells them to, they will. They trust him."
Ri looked around at the shadows.
"That explains a lot of things," Mia said. "I think the Army's been
preparing for this for a long time. From the first, maybe. That's why
Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from
learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep
them from exposing
him
to the people. The aliens wouldn't be fooled
like we were, so easy."
"No!" Ri snapped. "It was to keep the natural economic balance."
"You know that's not right."
Ri lay down on his bed roll. "Don't talk about it. It's not good to
talk like this. I don't even want to listen."
"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command
all
their loyalties.
To keep them from revolt again. They'd be ready to believe us, then.
He'll have a hard enough time without people running around trying to
tell the truth."
"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong."
Mia smiled twistedly. "How many has he already killed? How can we even
guess?"
Ri swallowed sickly.
"Remember our guide? To keep our hunting territory a secret?"
Ri shuddered. "That's different. Don't you see? This is not at all like
that."
With morning came birds' songs, came dew, came breakfast smells.
The air was sweet with cooking and it was nostalgic, childhoodlike,
uncontaminated.
And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the
flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around
the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep.
"Breakfast!" he shouted, and two bearers came running with a folding
table and chair. Behind them, a third bearer, carrying a tray of
various foods; and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher
and a drinking mug.
Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his
conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with
water and spat on the ground.
"Lin!" he said.
His personal bearer came loping toward him.
"Have you read that manual I gave you?"
Lin nodded. "Yes."
Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. "Very
ludicrous, Lin. Have you noticed that I have two businessmen for
guides? It occurred to me when I got up. They would have spat on me,
twenty years ago, damn them."
Lin waited.
"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me."
"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir," Lin said.
"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?"
"I believe they're carnivorous, sir."
"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only
information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of
course, two businessmen."
"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of
tearing a man—"
"An alien?" Extrone corrected.
"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an
alien to pieces, sir."
Extrone laughed harshly. "It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?"
Lin's face remained impassive. "I guess it seems that way. Sir."
"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do," Extrone said. "But
you're afraid of me, too, in your own way, aren't you?"
Lin shrugged. "Maybe."
"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how
wonderful it feels to have people
all
afraid of you."
"The farn beasts, according to the manual...."
"You are very insistent on one subject."
"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I
was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of
aliens. Sir."
"All right," Extrone said, annoyed. "I'll be careful."
In the distance, a farn beast coughed.
Instantly alert, Extrone said, "Get the bearers! Have some of them cut
a path through that damn thicket! And tell those two businessmen to get
the hell over here!"
Lin smiled, his eyes suddenly afire with the excitement of the hunt.
Four hours later, they were well into the scrub forest. Extrone walked
leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at
the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their
sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy
breathing.
Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank
deeply of the icy water to allay the heat of the forest, a heat made
oppressive by the press of foliage against the outside air.
Ranging out, on both sides of the central body, the two businessmen
fought independently against the wild growth, each scouting the flanks
for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the
tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near.
Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a
powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained
fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a
folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered
two-way communication set.
Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny,
arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to
Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur.
When the sun stood high and heat exhaustion made the near-naked bearers
slump, Extrone permitted a rest. While waiting for the march to resume,
he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted,
reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs.
"For you, sir," the communications man said, interrupting his reverie.
"Damn," Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. "It better be
important." He took the head-set and mike and nodded to the bearer. The
bearer twiddled the dials.
"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother
me?... All right, so they found out I was here. You got them, didn't
you?"
"Blasted them right out of space," the voice crackled excitedly. "Right
in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir."
"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!" Extrone
tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. "If they call back,
find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's
important."
"Yes, sir."
Extrone squinted up at the sun; his eyes crinkled under the glare, and
perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands.
Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining
bearers. He stopped before Extrone and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"I located a spoor," he said, suppressed eagerness in his voice. "About
a quarter ahead. It looks fresh."
Extrone's eyes lit with passion.
Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. "There were two, I
think."
"Two?" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. "You and I better go forward
and look at the spoor."
Lin said, "We ought to take protection, if you're going, too."
Extrone laughed. "This is enough." He gestured with the rifle and stood
up.
"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir," Lin said.
"One is enough in
my
camp."
The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved
agilely through the tangle, following Lin closely. When they came to
the tracks, heavily pressed into drying mud around a small watering
hole, Extrone nodded his head in satisfaction.
"This way," Lin said, pointing, and once more the two of them started
off.
They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more
alert with each additional foot. Finally, Lin stopped him with a
restraining hand. "They may be quite a way ahead. Hadn't we ought to
bring up the column?"
The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed.
Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively.
The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time.
"They're moving away," Lin said.
"Damn!" Extrone said.
"It's a good thing the wind's right, or they'd be coming back, and
fast, too."
"Eh?" Extrone said.
"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track
down a man for as long as a day."
"Wait," Extrone said, combing his beard. "Wait a minute."
"Yes?"
"Look," Extrone said. "If that's the case, why do we bother tracking
them? Why not make them come to us?"
"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have
surprise on our side."
"You don't seem to see what I mean," Extrone said. "
We
won't be
the—ah—the bait."
"Oh?"
"Let's get back to the column."
"Extrone wants to see you," Lin said.
Ri twisted at the grass shoot, broke it off, worried and unhappy.
"What's he want to see
me
for?"
"I don't know," Lin said curtly.
Ri got to his feet. One of his hands reached out, plucked nervously
at Lin's bare forearm. "Look," he whispered. "You know him. I have—a
little money. If you were able to ... if he wants," Ri gulped, "to
do
anything to me—I'd pay you, if you could...."
"You better come along," Lin said, turning.
Ri rubbed his hands along his thighs; he sighed, a tiny sound,
ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where
Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.
Extrone nodded genially. "The farn beast hunter, eh?"
"Yes, sir."
Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. "Tell me
what they look like," he said suddenly.
"Well, sir, they're ... uh...."
"Pretty frightening?"
"No, sir.... Well, in a way, sir."
"But
you
weren't afraid of them, were you?"
"No, sir. No, because...."
Extrone was smiling innocently. "Good. I want you to do something for
me."
"I ... I...." Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye.
Lin's face was impassive.
"Of
course
you will," Extrone said genially. "Get me a rope, Lin. A
good, long, strong rope."
"What are you going to do?" Ri asked, terrified.
"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as
bait."
"No!"
"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you
can
scream,
by the way?"
Ri swallowed.
"We could find a way to make you."
There was perspiration trickling down Ri's forehead, a single drop,
creeping toward his nose.
"You'll be safe," Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. "I'll
shoot the animal before it reaches you."
Ri gulped for air. "But ... if there should be more than one?"
Extrone shrugged.
"I—Look, sir. Listen to me." Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands
were trembling. "It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir.
He
killed a farn beast before
I
did, sir. And last night—last
night, he—"
"He what?" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently.
Ri breathed with a gurgling sound. "He said he ought to kill you, sir.
That's what he said. I heard him, sir. He said he ought to kill you.
He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident,
sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I
wouldn't...."
Extrone said, "Which one is he?"
"That one. Right over there."
"The one with his back to me?"
"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir."
Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle
and said, "Here comes Lin with the rope, I see."
Ri was greenish. "You ... you...."
Extrone turned to Lin. "Tie one end around his waist."
"Wait," Ri begged, fighting off the rope with his hands. "You don't
want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything
should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it."
"Tie it," Extrone ordered.
"No, sir. Please. Oh,
please
don't, sir."
"Tie it," Extrone said inexorably.
Lin bent with the rope; his face was colorless.
They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri.
Since the hole was drying, the left, partially exposed bank was steep
toward the muddy water. Upon it was green, new grass, tender-tuffed,
half mashed in places by heavy animal treads. It was there that they
staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base
of a scaling tree.
"You will scream," Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed
across the water hole. "The farn beast will come from this direction, I
imagine."
Ri was almost slobbering in fear.
"Let me hear you scream," Extrone said.
Ri moaned weakly.
"You'll have to do better than that." Extrone inclined his head toward
a bearer, who used something Ri couldn't see.
Ri screamed.
"See that you keep it up that way," Extrone said. "That's the way I
want you to sound." He turned toward Lin. "We can climb this tree, I
think."
Slowly, aided by the bearers, the two men climbed the tree, bark
peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly.
Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert.
Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller
crotch.
Looking down, Extrone said, "Scream!" Then, to Lin, "You feel the
excitement? It's always in the air like this at a hunt."
"I feel it," Lin said.
Extrone chuckled. "You were with me on Meizque?"
"Yes."
"That was something, that time." He ran his hand along the stock of the
weapon.
The sun headed west, veiling itself with trees; a large insect circled
Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet,
underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's
screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched.
Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick,
jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's
face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against
them, sucking at their breath like a vacuum. The insect went away.
Still, endless, hopeless, monotonous, Ri screamed.
A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest.
Extrone laughed nervously. "He must have heard."
"We're lucky to rouse one so fast," Lin said.
Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. "I like
this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I
know."
Lin nodded.
"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing
that matters."
"It's not
only
the killing," Lin echoed.
"You understand?" Extrone said. "How it is to wait, knowing in just a
minute something is going to come out of the forest, and you're going
to kill it?"
"I know," Lin said.
"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too."
The farn beast coughed again; nearer.
"It's a different one," Lin said.
"How do you know?"
"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?"
"Hey!" Extrone shouted. "You, down there. There are two coming. Now
let's hear you really scream!"
Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether
tree, his eyes wide.
"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too," Extrone said.
"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them." He
opened his right hand. "Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it."
He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes,
imprisoning the idea. "Spring the trap when the quarry is inside.
Clever. That makes the waiting more interesting. Waiting to see if they
really will come to your bait."
Lin shifted, staring toward the forest.
"I've always liked to hunt," Extrone said. "More than anything else, I
think."
Lin spat toward the ground. "People should hunt because they have to.
For food. For safety."
"No," Extrone argued. "People should hunt for the love of hunting."
"Killing?"
"Hunting," Extrone repeated harshly.
The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and
there was a noise of crackling underbrush.
"He's good bait," Extrone said. "He's fat enough and he knows how to
scream good."
Ri had stopped screaming; he was huddled against the tree, fearfully
eying the forest across from the watering hole.
Extrone began to tremble with excitement. "Here they come!"
The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his
lap.
The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank,
swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed.
Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs
behind them, rattling leaves.
"Shoot!" Lin hissed. "For God's sake, shoot!"
"Wait," Extrone said. "Let's see what they do." He had not moved
the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath
beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump.
The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head.
"Look!" Extrone cried excitedly. "Here it comes!"
Ri began to scream again.
Still Extrone did not lift his blast rifle. He was laughing. Lin
waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination.
The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing
a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri.
"Watch! Watch!" Extrone cried gleefully.
And then the aliens sprang their trap.
| Why isn't Extrone afraid of the aliens? | [
"Extrone believes the aliens are inferior and incapable of launching a successful attack against him.",
"Extrone is confident his armed forces will destroy the aliens before they are able to attack him.",
"Extrone believes himself to be untouchable.",
"The Ninth Fleet is the most decorated and undefeated force. They can protect Extrone from the aliens."
] | 1 | true |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| What is the Brightside? | [
"The Brightside is the side of Mercury that constantly faces the sun.",
"The Brightside is the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus.",
"The Brightside is the name of the passage on the Andean mountains of Venus.",
"The Brightside is the name of the crossing the climbers are going to climb."
] | 0 | true |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| Why does Baron think there was something wrong with Claney's filters? | [
"Claney's face is extremely sunburned.",
"Claney's face is twisted and brown.",
"Claney's face is covered in scars.",
"Claney's face is covered in cancerous tumors."
] | 3 | false |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| How does Claney feel about Mikuta? | [
"Claney likes Mikuta. He can trust Mikuta.",
"Claney doesn't like Mikuta. Mikuta makes too many mistakes.",
"Claney likes Mikuta, but Mikuta makes too many mistakes.",
"Claney doesn't like Mikuta. He can't trust Mikuta."
] | 0 | false |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| What happened to Wyatt and Carpenter? | [
"They died when a rock slide crushed their vehicle while they were attempting the Brightside Crossing.",
"They crossed the Brightside at aphelion.",
"They disappeared after their ship set off for Mercury. They were on a mission to cross the Brightside.",
"They disappeared when they attempted to cross the Brightside at perihelion."
] | 0 | true |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| What was Sanderson studying? | [
"The Brightside",
"The Darkside",
"The twilight zone",
"The Sun"
] | 3 | true |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| What does Baron think was one of the mistakes Claney's team made? | [
"Trying to cross on foot",
"Using suits with fiberglass lining",
"Not counting on the Bugs for protection",
"Asking McIvers to be on the team"
] | 3 | false |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| What is the twilight zone? | [
"The place at the end of the Brightside Crossing.",
"A lab where they study the Sun.",
"The place between Brightside and Darkside.",
"A lab where they study Mercury."
] | 2 | false |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| Why doesn't the Major want McIvers to scout ahead? | [
"The Major thinks McIvers is up to something. The Major wants McIvers close, so he can keep an eye on him.",
"The Major thinks it's safer if they stay together.",
"The Major doesn't want McIvers to steal the glory by completing the crossing first.",
"The Major doesn't want to be responsible if McIvers dies."
] | 1 | false |
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse
JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had
a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He
had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there
were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman
had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand
pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no
name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by
eight.”
Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring
about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the
Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in
number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew
vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over
near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped
the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron
returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and
waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time
without justifying it.
Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat
down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held
no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but
he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and
forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still
healing.
The stranger said, “I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re
planning to attempt the Brightside.”
Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read
telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going
to make a Brightside Crossing.”
“At perihelion?”
“Of course. When else?”
The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment
without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re
not going to make the Crossing.”
“Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded.
“The name is Claney,” said the stranger.
There was a silence. Then: “Claney?
Peter
Claney?”
“That’s right.”
Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger
gone. “Great balls of fire, man—
where have you been hiding?
We’ve been trying to contact you for months!”
“I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the
whole idea.”
“Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My
friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking.
Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His
fingers were trembling.
Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you
want to hear.”
“But you’ve
got
to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s
attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the
story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need
details
. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you
miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a
finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma?
Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve
got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make
it across where your attempt failed—”
“You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney.
“Of course we want to know. We
have
to know.”
“It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t
do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross
the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.”
“Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.”
Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You
can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in
both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting.
It was the
planet
that whipped us, that and the
Sun
. They’ll
whip you, too, if you try it.”
“Never,” said Baron.
“Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said.
I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as
I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when
Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,
I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then
I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.
I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without
proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface
conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made
a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a
terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the
Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my
blood, sure as death.
But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever
know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American.
He was a major in the Interplanetary Service
for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up
his commission.
He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days,
did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for
the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five
years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring
since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan
Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.
I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool,
the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further
ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight
place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck,
with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind
of personality that could take a crew of wild men and
make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand
miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.
He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at
first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about
old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d
been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury,
and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the
year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since
Venus and what my plans were.
“No particular plans,” I told him. “Why?”
He looked me over. “How much do you weigh, Peter?”
I told him one-thirty-five.
“That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on
you, at any rate. How do you take heat?”
“You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.”
“No, I mean
real
heat.”
Then I began to get it. “You’re planning a trip.”
“That’s right. A hot trip.” He grinned at me. “Might be
dangerous, too.”
“What trip?”
“Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said.
I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?”
He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion?
What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous
heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and
drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four
days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense
about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make
a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If
a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then,
nobody’s
got
Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.”
I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider
it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury
turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around
the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in.
That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest
place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the
surface of the Sun itself.
It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned
just
how
hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It
was a real hell’s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody
would cross it.
I wanted to be along.
The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the
obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a
rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s
crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed
the Solar ’scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years
before.
Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside,
of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked
Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could
hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On
Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion
and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent
installation with a human crew could survive at either
extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between
Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival
temperatures.
Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone
is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to
60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that
much change and they’d get good clear observation of the Sun
for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet
to wheel around.
The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something
about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab
to make final preparations.
Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said
so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week
briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had
arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier.
Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson
had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside
was like.
Stone was a youngster—hardly twenty-five, I’d say—but
he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join
this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for
exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed
him around like a puppy.
It didn’t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting
in for. You don’t go asking people in this game why they do it—they’re
liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can
ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had
borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and
equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check
and test.
We dug right in. With plenty of funds—tri-V money and
some government cash the Major had talked his way around—our
equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing
and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson.
We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models,
with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in,
and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.
The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he
said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?”
“Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know.
“He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name
for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve
probably heard of him.”
I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t
too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil,
isn’t he?”
“Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the
line? We’ll need plenty of both.”
“Have you ever worked with him?” I asked.
“No. Are you worried?”
“Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.”
The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about
McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the
trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to
do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list.
“Meanwhile, let’s get this stuff listed and packed. We’ll need
to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says
we should leave in three days.”
Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t
say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We
spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as
they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so
far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They
showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and
that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline
of our course.
“This range here,” the Major said as we crowded around
the board, “is largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But
these to the south and west
could
be active. Seismograph
tracings suggest a lot of activity in that region, getting worse
down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface
shifting.”
Stone nodded. “Sanderson told me there was probably constant
surface activity.”
The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no
doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the
Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of
less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could
find a pass through this range and cut sharp east—”
It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the
further we got from a solution. We knew there were active
volcanoes on the Brightside—even on the Darkside, though
surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and
localized.
But there were problems of atmosphere on Brightside, as
well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric
flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases
had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside
millennia ago—but there was CO
2
, and nitrogen, and traces of
other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur
vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide.
The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it
condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson
to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on
Brightside from his samplings. The trick was to find a passage
that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final
analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way
we would find out what was happening where was to be there.
Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight
rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and
I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus
in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset
about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and
he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited.
He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely
gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed,
sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness.
And he never stood still; he was always moving, always doing
something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about.
Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his
arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were
running the final tests on the pressure suits. That evening,
Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was
set for an early departure after we got some rest.
“And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling
the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.”
Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?”
“Of course.”
Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around
them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place
like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most
reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t
our big problem right then.
Equipment
worried us first and
route
next.”
Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you
have?”
“The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each
one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid
the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit
and oxygen storage which we recharged from the sledges every
eight hours. Outer layer carried a monomolecular chrome reflecting
surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And
we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between
the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at
770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders
if the suits failed somewhere.”
“How about the Bugs?”
“They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on
them too much for protection.”
“You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?”
“We’d be in and out of them too much. They gave us mobility
and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of
forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant
that we had an inch of fiberglass and a half-inch of dead air
between us and a surface temperature where lead flowed like
water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of
sulfur in the shadows were boiling like oatmeal over a campfire.”
Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass
as he set it down on the tablecloth.
“Go on,” he said tautly. “You started on schedule?”
“Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right.
We just didn’t quite end on schedule, that was all. But I’m
getting to that.”
He settled back in his chair and continued.
We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast
with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we
could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit
Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest
approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of
the planet at the hottest it ever gets.
The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon
when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day
that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the
surface would get hotter. But once we reached Center, the job
was only half done—we would still have to travel another
two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson
was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship,
approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off.
That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those
seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter
what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and
time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew
that.
The Major briefed us on details an hour before we left.
“Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped
down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving
you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of
dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty
closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point.
If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead
on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?”
McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack
and I were planning to change around. We figured he could
take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.”
The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that,
Jack?”
Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—”
McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It
doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does
it make any difference?”
“I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank
Peter along with me. Right?”
“Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going
to do the advance scouting?”
“It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead
Bug light as possible.”
Mikuta nodded. “That’s right. Peter’s Bug is stripped down
to the frame and wheels.”
McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the
advance
work.
You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to
pick up the big flaws and active surface changes, don’t you?”
He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of
a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up
ahead?”
“That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said
sharply.
“Charts! I’m talking about
detail
work. We don’t need to
worry about the major topography. It’s the little faults you
can’t see on the pictures that can kill us.” He tossed the charts
down excitedly. “Look, let me take a Bug out ahead and work
reconnaissance, keep five, maybe ten miles ahead of the column.
I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the
area closely and radio back to Peter where to avoid the flaws.
Then—”
“No dice,” the Major broke in.
“But why not? We could save ourselves days!”
“I don’t care what we could save. We stay together. When
we get to the Center, I want live men along with me. That
means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any
climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man
alone—any time, any place.”
McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he
gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff.
We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together.
Got that?”
McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and
we nodded, too.
“All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight,
let’s go.”
It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll
never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a
break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the
first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and
fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of
the Twilight Lab.
I moved out first; back over my shoulder, I could see the
Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires
taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them,
Stone dragged the sledges.
Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on
the big tractor, until the ski-blades bit into the fluffy volcanic
ash blanketing the valley. We even had a path to follow for
the first twenty miles.
I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out
the track the early research teams had made out into the edge
of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s
little outpost observatory and the tracks stopped. We
were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to
bite.
We didn’t
feel
the heat so much those first days out. We
saw
it. The refrig units kept our skins at a nice comfortable seventy-five
degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched
that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and
some nerve pathways got twisted up, somehow. We poured
sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace.
We drove eight hours and slept five. When a sleep period
came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up
a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks.
The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy
degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the
forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates,
bulk gelatin, vitamins.
The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because
we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise.
We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists
and psychiatrists why—they can give you have a dozen interesting
reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it
happened to be so.
We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our
eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches,
but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking
at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would
taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers
for one ice-cold bottle of beer.
After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at
the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made
Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden.
Huge sun-baked cracks opened up in the floor of the gorge,
with black cliffs jutting up on either side; the air was filled
with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous
gases.
It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but
the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one
had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had
tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there,
so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed
the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land
could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible.
Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered
before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before
and won. We’d never fought heat like this and won. The only
worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun
itself.
Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would
get us. That was the bargain.
I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods.
The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved
onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and
east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing
on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active
cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly; their
sides were shrouded with heavy ash.
We couldn’t detect a wind, but we knew there was a hot,
sulfurous breeze sweeping in great continental tides across the
face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters
rose up out of jagged gorges, huge towering spears of rock and
rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing
from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray
dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite
ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous
surface for the Bug’s pillow tires.
I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the
sag of the dust; I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it
from an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to
a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with
light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more
until we were sure the surface would carry the machines. It
was cruel work; we slept in exhaustion. But it went smoothly,
at first.
Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to
think so, too.
McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves.
He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were
driving; wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin
with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route
now and then, never far, but a little further each time.
Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite; he grew quieter with
each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but
I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive
enough myself; I just managed to hide it better.
And every mile the Sun got bigger and whiter and higher in
the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare
filters we would have been blinded; as it was our eyes ached
constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the
end of an eight-hour trek.
But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the
penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven
down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our
route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we
heard a sharp cry through our earphones.
I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and
spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the
top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down
the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand
horrible pictures racing through our minds....
We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge
and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck
of a Bug; an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that
hadn’t been in use for years. It was wedged tight in a cut in
the rock, an axle broken, its casing split wide open up the
middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were
two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the
fiberglass helmets.
This was as far as Wyatt and Carpenter had gotten on
their
Brightside Crossing.
On the fifth driving period out, the terrain began to change.
It looked the same, but every now and then it
felt
different.
On two occasions I felt my wheels spin, with a howl of protest
from my engine. Then, quite suddenly, the Bug gave a lurch;
I gunned my motor and nothing happened.
I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs,
thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as
the wheels spun. I knew what had happened the moment the
wheels gave and, a few minutes later, they chained me to the
tractor and dragged me back out of the mire. It looked for
all the world like thick gray mud, but it was a pit of molten
lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash.
I picked my way more cautiously then. We were getting into
an area of recent surface activity; the surface was really treacherous.
I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed
McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout; more dangerous for
the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t
like it.
One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking
much about the others. I was worried about
me
, plenty
worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me.
It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the
thought out of my mind.
It was a grueling eight hours and we slept poorly. Back in
the Bug again, we moved still more slowly—edging out on a
broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding
back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on
solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze
rising from the cracks, so I was almost on top of it when I saw
a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond
a deep crack.
I let out a shout to halt the others; then I edged my Bug
forward, peering at the cleft. It was deep and wide. I moved
fifty yards to the left, then back to the right.
There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing;
a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across
a section of the fault like a ramp. Even as I watched it, I could
feel the surface crust under the Bug trembling and saw the
ledge shift over a few feet.
| What is the Red Lion? | [
"A gentlemen's club",
"A restaurant",
"A club for explorers and adventurers",
"A bar"
] | 2 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| What is Ben's relationship with Charlie? | [
"Chalie is Ben's uncle.",
"Charlie is Ben's favorite teacher at the Academy.",
"Charlie is Ben's grandfather.",
"Charlie is the only family Ben has."
] | 3 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| Why doesn't Laura want to marry Ben? | [
"She does want to marry Ben. However, spacemen are gone all the time. She needs a partner who is going to be there for her.",
"She does want to marry Ben, but spacemen can't have children.",
"She doesn't want to marry Ben because they've only known each other for six weeks.",
"She doesn't want to marry Ben because of the possibility of birth defects caused by space travel."
] | 0 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| How does Ben feel about Mickey? | [
"Ben thinks Mickey is a great guy, just not a great co-worker.",
"Ben likes Mickey, they work well together.",
"Ben does not like Mickey. He is relieved Mickey is not headed to space with him.",
"Ben thinks of Mickey as his own brother."
] | 1 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| Why doesn't Charlie want to go with Laura and Mickey? | [
"Charlie is not really a people person. He likes Ben, but that's about it.",
"Charlie is very self-conscious about his scars. He is uncomfortable around other people.",
"Charlie is uncomfortable with Laura and Mickey's wealth. He feels a bit shabby because his coat is missing a button.",
"Charlie is dying and Ben is the only family he has. He wants to spend his last moments with Ben."
] | 3 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| Why does Mickey decide not to go into space? | [
"Mickey was offered a job as Chief Jetman on the Lunar Lady.",
"Mickey was offered a job at the Academy teaching astrogation.",
"Mickey thinks that if he goes into space he'll only live another five to ten years. Space travel is dangerous.",
"Mickey was offered a job as Chief Jetman on the White Sands."
] | 2 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| How does Ben feel about Laura? | [
"Ben loves Laura, but not enough to give up space travel.",
"Ben thinks Laura is the one.",
"Ben likes Laura but they only met 40 days ago. It's not that serious.",
"Ben thinks Laura got too serious, too fast. It's only been 40 days."
] | 0 | true |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| Why does Ben leave Laura? | [
"Ben leaves Laura because he feels guilty that he dragged Charlie to Mickey and Laura's parents.",
"Ben leaves Laura because she wants kids, and he doesn't.",
"Ben leaves Laura because the call to explore the universe is irresistible.",
"Ben leaves Laura because he knows he'll grow to resent her if he stays."
] | 2 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| Why does Ben tell Laura his has her wedding ring? | [
"Ben is telling her he can't marry her, so he's taking back the ring.",
"Ben is telling her that even though he can't stay, she is the only woman he'll ever love.",
"Ben is telling her that the marriage is over, so he's taking the ring back.",
"Ben is telling her he was going to marry her but, she can't compete with the universe."
] | 1 | false |
Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's
been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you
what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the
stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing
fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an
evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,
were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and
laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after
spawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class
of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The
first
graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,
because we were the
first
.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach
of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New
Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and
grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time
ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken
wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had
never really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us
with pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked
hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.
They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately
need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land
that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most
important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up
at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on
Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and
who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders
and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth
and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,
for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the
others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the
first!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't
see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in
a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those
"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie
Taggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a
veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years
ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the
Lunar
Lady
, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White
Sands.
I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island
Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like
me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I
remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.
My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It
wasn't surprising. The
Lunar Lady
was in White Sands now, but
liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.
It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"
Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a
garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a
tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that
he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at
the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was
mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only
half as big.
And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we
were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw
the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each
like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by
the sons of Earth.
They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of
civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and
a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.
I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.
At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,
babbling wave.
Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.
His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining
like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear
rows.
But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and
old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that
it was hard to believe he'd once been young.
He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.
"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate
tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as
good spacemen should!"
Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,
walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm
with some silent melody.
And you, Laura, were with him.
"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."
I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity
of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a
golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes
of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a
gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.
"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for
the past year."
A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an
introduction of Charlie.
You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old
Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie
scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a
shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.
His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.
And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the
result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so
accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I
knew, would find them ugly.
You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to
meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first
to reach the Moon!"
Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the
weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"
I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're
planning to see the town tonight."
"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their
own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.
Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the
Moon?"
Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew
that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian
fizzes and Plutonian zombies.
But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.
"We'd really like to come," I said.
On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was
a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor
should look.
"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two
months to decide."
"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."
A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben?
Did he make you an offer?"
I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching
astrogation. What a life
that
would be! Imagine standing in a
classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"
I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the
chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you
want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."
I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to
understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.
Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used
to want."
"
Used
to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"
You bit your lip, not answering.
"What did she mean, Mickey?"
Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben.
We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"
"Yes?"
"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty
uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If
you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or
another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."
My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to
say, Mickey?"
"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor
of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not
so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."
I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my
knees with the blast of a jet.
"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have
a good weekend."
Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to
reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the
'copter.
"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."
I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course.
They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things,
deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was
cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional
video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or
housework.
Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a
shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.
At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit
Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic.
Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough,
the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid
in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that.
Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."
That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.
Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night,
to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally
streaked up from White Sands.
We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said:
"Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's
sort of funny."
"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those
days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a
spaceman then."
"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"
I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie
doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as
I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."
You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew
suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.
There was silence.
You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were
flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the
feeling that I shouldn't have come here.
You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking,
Laura?"
You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be
thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."
"I could never hate you."
"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you
want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were
kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I
dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I
lived for months, just thinking about it.
"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles,
and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I
realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting
before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."
I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think
maybe I haven't grown up yet?"
Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman,
to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it
worth the things you'd have to give up?"
I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up
what
?"
Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.
All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.
Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on
the stars.
Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that
I'd never noticed before.
You can go into space
, I thought,
and try to do as much living in
ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died
in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie
buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like
Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally
alone, never finding a home.
Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth
in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with
a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow
old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who
fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous
dust.
"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."
"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of
sense."
The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his
scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin,
tight coughs.
Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm
leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought
maybe you'd like to have 'em."
I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"
He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh,
it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years.
That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky.
Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."
I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."
He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm
gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell
you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just
off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a
look inside. I'll probably be there."
He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.
"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian
climate."
Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered,
too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were
drugged.
I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about
going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.
We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.
"When will you be back?" you asked.
Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a
couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."
Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.
I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill
the doubt worming through my brain.
But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was
gone.
That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's
room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids
treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy,
books, a home-made video.
I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy.
I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched
their children grow to adulthood.
I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of
them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it
had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and
routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams,
I hadn't realized I was different.
My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd
have lived the kind of life a kid should live.
Mickey noticed my frown.
"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just
not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"
"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."
"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"
"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the
Odyssey
, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me,
too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than
teaching. I want to be in deep space."
"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy
Earth life while you can. Okay?"
I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted
someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of
courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.
But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the
flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever
so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as
much as I loved the stars.
And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure,
I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."
Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the
little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying
down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to
teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon
and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and
promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.
One morning I thought,
Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both
you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?
All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.
That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I
want you to be my wife."
You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face
flushed.
Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me
to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"
"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"
"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see,
Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for
maybe
two months,
maybe
two
years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"
Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't
have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years,
then teach."
"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't
you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"
Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears
glittering in your eyes.
"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened
on the
Cyclops
. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was
flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The
men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it
was—"
"I know, Laura. Don't say it."
You had to finish. "It was a monster."
That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me
sleep.
You've got to decide now
, I told myself.
You can't stay here. You've
got to make a choice.
The teaching job was still open. The spot on the
Odyssey
was still
open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the
way to Pluto.
You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a
home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.
Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a
line in a history book.
I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out
of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get
out there on the
Odyssey
where you belong. We got a date on Mars,
remember? At the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand
Canal."
That's what he'd say.
And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.
"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"
Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and
brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who
could be sending me a message.
I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping,
automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to
inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."
Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word
"lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by
courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."
I stood staring at the cylinder.
Charles Taggart was dead.
Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.
My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie!
The audiogram had lied!
I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of
Charles ..."
I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken
voice droned on.
You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"
Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I
remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze.
The metallic words had told the truth.
I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at
Charlie's faded tin box.
Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled
photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god,
a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.
This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space.
It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters
instead of children, a medal instead of a home.
It'd be a great future
, I thought.
You'd dream of sitting in a dingy
stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky,
stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls
with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first
sign of lung-rot.
To hell with it!
I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.
I accepted that job teaching.
And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping,
and the house is silent.
It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am
writing this.
I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading
the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that
Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they
could tell me what he could not express in words.
And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.
A wedding ring.
In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife.
Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same
decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to
travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be
no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.
Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he
could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never
live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He
left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a
man's dream.
He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven
knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was
kind—but that doesn't matter now.
Do you know
why
he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't
want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?
It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the
Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother,
brothers, the planets his children.
You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes
after you reach it. But how can one ever be
sure
until the journey is
made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a
star and think,
I might have gone there; I could have been the first
?
We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one
be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?
Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us
to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his
last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration
to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.
Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain
the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.
Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe
on Mars, the
Space Rat
, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.
Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever
part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.
I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.
| What is lung-rot? | [
"Lung-rot is a disease caused by chemicals in the Martian atmosphere.",
"Lung-rot is tuberculosis.",
"A disease that presents like whooping cough.",
"Lung-rot is Martian slang for pneumonia."
] | 0 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| What is main the flaw in Harris' plan to sell the eggs of fashion models? | [
"He doesn't take into account the IQ of the donors.",
"He doesn't take into account recessive genes.",
"He doesn't screen the eggs for genetic problems.",
"He doesn't take the medical history of the donors."
] | 1 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| What does the author think may happen if a child doesn't look the way the egg buyer expects? | [
"The buyer may shun the child.",
"The buyer may try to sell the child.",
"The buyer may kill the child.",
"The buyer may sue Harris' company."
] | 0 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| What could a buyer do if they didn't get the eggs they paid for? | [
"There is not much a buyer could do to verify the eggs came from the expected donors.",
"They could sue the egg donor.",
"They could sue Harris for everything he's worth.",
"They could pick out a new donor to receive eggs from."
] | 0 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| What is the main concern about egg auctions? | [
"Egg auctions will steer the future of human breeding toward genetic engineering.",
"Egg auctions will steer the future of human breeding toward cloning.",
"Egg auctions will produce designer babies.",
"Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies."
] | 0 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| What does the author think about women who sell their eggs? | [
"They are depressed.",
"They have a few screws loose.",
"They are just trying to get by financially.",
"They are liars and fools."
] | 1 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| What kind of person would buy eggs at an auction such as Harris'? | [
"A wealthy person who is desperate to have a child.",
"A wealthy, superficial, and naive person trying to ensure their child will be beautiful, healthy, and intelligent.",
"A wealthy, superficial person who wants to ensure they have a physically pleasing child. This person, however, is not intelligent enough to see the flaws of the plan.",
"A wealthy person who wants to manipulate their child's physical appearance."
] | 2 | true |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| Why are the children produced by the egg auction likely to be the offspring of liars and fools? | [
"Harris didn't verify the medical histories of the models. They could have lied on their donation forms. Only fools would buy human eggs from a man such as Harris.",
"Most models have had cosmetic surgery. Only fools would buy eggs based on internet photos.",
"Harris advertised that the eggs came from intelligent women, but he didn't verify their IQs. Only fools would buy human eggs from a man who sells pornography.",
"Some models lied about their ages. Only fools would buy eggs"
] | 1 | false |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| Does the author think Harris is serious about selling eggs? | [
"Not at all, selling eggs is a PR stunt, to drive traffic to Harris' pornography website.",
"Absolutely, designer babies are big money.",
"Yes, however, he is not intelligent enough to see the many flaws in his plan.",
"Yes, Harris is already in talks with geneticists. He'll be able to charge extra for certain features."
] | 0 | true |
eBabe
This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to "bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women." Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are "looking into" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other.
1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, "We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris "can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs," predict that his success will steer "the future of human breeding" toward "genetic engineering."
2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. "Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture," observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries "recessive" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow.
3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once "beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them," the rich will transform themselves into a "super-race" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, "It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder." But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into "genetic haves and have nots."
4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with "substantial financial resources" are fit to give his models' offspring "a financially secure and stable life." But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, "Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up."
5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' "angels" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? "There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth," he says. Annas concludes that since there's "no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise," only a "naive" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. "You don't want to see the models," he points out. "You want to see pictures of their parents." On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other.
6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty "shows healthiness and longevity." On his site, he writes, " 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful." Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much "medical screening" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, "None."
7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is "superficial" and conveys a "harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character." This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break.
8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to "success," since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over "character," critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are "beautiful, healthy and intelligent," he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions "Bimbo births." A fertility expert shrugs, "If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them."
9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's "unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of "taking advantage of couples trying to conceive" and exploiting "desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell." USA Today laments, "This is about human need. And human greed."
10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as "struggling actresses," reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, "I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse ." Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was "better than prostitution."
Harris constantly refers to the donors as his "girls" and describes them like cattle--"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls." He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. "We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items," he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to "find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web." To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit.
11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at "adolescent boys."
12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. "Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs," one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction "just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?"
13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. "When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud," a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that "there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected," and "the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from."
14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, "That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples.
15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that "having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation." But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: "our genes." "The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site," Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself.
16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole "prejudice" in favor of beauty. "The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts," says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, "we should think about" whether to "accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them" or to transcend those prejudices.
This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former?
Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. "Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state," he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.
| Who is an example of someone whose good looks attracted the wrong kind of attention? | [
"Taylor Swift",
"Justin Bieber",
"Britney Spears",
"Marilyn Monroe"
] | 3 | false |
Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review
When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official "1999 In Review" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.
OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person "rather annoying and less than professional") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as "Today's Papers" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.
By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them.
( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. )
Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999:
1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?
The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with "amazing results"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time.
-- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent
Slate contributor)
2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999
The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because "you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons," but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can!
--Jim Chapin
3. Worst/Best Films of 1999
Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: "Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt!
-- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal.
Chatterbox replies:
You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 .
[Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about "the franks or the beans."]
Felicia replies:
Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful!
[Chatterbox hasn't seen it.]
4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 :
Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton "not proven" on the impeachment charges.
--Andrew Solovay
5. Rest in Peace in 1999:
Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources)
John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)
Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough)
Mel Torme (Steve Reiness)
Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles)
6. 1999: The Road Not Taken
What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history.
--Mike Gebert
7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999
Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of "peace and love" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it.
You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by "quiet, shy" people who "mostly kept to" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people.
--Susan Hoechstetter
8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees
The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant "story of the year." However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context.
1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the "City of the Century" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the "National Pastime," are truly an amazing story.
The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play.
The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature "a name." This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm.
--Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx)
9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999
New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick.
--Henry Cohen
Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago?
10. Don't Worry in 1999
The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy.
--Margaret Taylor
11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999
Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer.
--Tom Horton
12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999
Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico.
--Tom Horton
13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999
I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties.
These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions.
--Jerry Skurnik
14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good
Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy .
--anonymous tipster
15. Annals of Justice in 1999
Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense .
-- anonymous tipster
16. Get Me a New Century, Quick
A sitting president was accused of rape.
--Ananda Gupta
Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too.
17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999
In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent.
--Walt Mossberg, "Personal Technology" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column)
18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999
General Pinochet
--Jodie Maurer
19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999
The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late.
--Josh Pollack
20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999
The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least.
--Samir Raiyani
Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.
| Who is the most hated celebrity of 1999? | [
"Larry Flynt",
"Donald Trump",
"Bob Livingston",
"Linda Tripp"
] | 1 | false |
Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review
When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official "1999 In Review" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.
OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person "rather annoying and less than professional") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as "Today's Papers" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.
By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them.
( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. )
Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999:
1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?
The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with "amazing results"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time.
-- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent
Slate contributor)
2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999
The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because "you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons," but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can!
--Jim Chapin
3. Worst/Best Films of 1999
Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: "Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt!
-- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal.
Chatterbox replies:
You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 .
[Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about "the franks or the beans."]
Felicia replies:
Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful!
[Chatterbox hasn't seen it.]
4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 :
Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton "not proven" on the impeachment charges.
--Andrew Solovay
5. Rest in Peace in 1999:
Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources)
John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)
Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough)
Mel Torme (Steve Reiness)
Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles)
6. 1999: The Road Not Taken
What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history.
--Mike Gebert
7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999
Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of "peace and love" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it.
You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by "quiet, shy" people who "mostly kept to" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people.
--Susan Hoechstetter
8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees
The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant "story of the year." However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context.
1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the "City of the Century" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the "National Pastime," are truly an amazing story.
The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play.
The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature "a name." This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm.
--Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx)
9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999
New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick.
--Henry Cohen
Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago?
10. Don't Worry in 1999
The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy.
--Margaret Taylor
11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999
Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer.
--Tom Horton
12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999
Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico.
--Tom Horton
13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999
I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties.
These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions.
--Jerry Skurnik
14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good
Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy .
--anonymous tipster
15. Annals of Justice in 1999
Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense .
-- anonymous tipster
16. Get Me a New Century, Quick
A sitting president was accused of rape.
--Ananda Gupta
Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too.
17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999
In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent.
--Walt Mossberg, "Personal Technology" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column)
18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999
General Pinochet
--Jodie Maurer
19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999
The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late.
--Josh Pollack
20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999
The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least.
--Samir Raiyani
Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.
| What was the best movie of 1999? | [
"All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go",
"The Red Violin",
"There's Something About Mary",
"The Road Not Taken"
] | 1 | false |
Eleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review
When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official "1999 In Review" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December.
OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person "rather annoying and less than professional") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as "Today's Papers" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it.
By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them.
( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. )
Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999:
1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever?
The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with "amazing results"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time.
-- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent
Slate contributor)
2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999
The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because "you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons," but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can!
--Jim Chapin
3. Worst/Best Films of 1999
Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: "Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt!
-- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal.
Chatterbox replies:
You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 .
[Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about "the franks or the beans."]
Felicia replies:
Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful!
[Chatterbox hasn't seen it.]
4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 :
Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton "not proven" on the impeachment charges.
--Andrew Solovay
5. Rest in Peace in 1999:
Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources)
John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources)
Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster; Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough)
Mel Torme (Steve Reiness)
Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles)
6. 1999: The Road Not Taken
What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer; a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment; a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage; a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history.
--Mike Gebert
7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999
Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of "peace and love" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it.
You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by "quiet, shy" people who "mostly kept to" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people.
--Susan Hoechstetter
8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees
The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant "story of the year." However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context.
1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the "City of the Century" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the "National Pastime," are truly an amazing story.
The team's first championship occurred in 1921; therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play.
The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature "a name." This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm.
--Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx)
9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999
New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson came out for ending drug prohibition. Though this by itself has no immediate effect, it makes it respectable, for the first time, for political leaders to discuss the subject, and thereby brings closer the day when the vast majority of crimes will no longer be committed, when billions of dollars will be freed to help the inner city instead of to ruin black people's lives, and when we will stop, as in Samuel Butler's Erewhon , imprisoning people for the crime of being sick.
--Henry Cohen
Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago?
10. Don't Worry in 1999
The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy.
--Margaret Taylor
11. The Athletic Bra Seen 'Round the World in 1999
Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer.
--Tom Horton
12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999
Presidential primary elections for the first time ever in Mexico.
--Tom Horton
13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999
I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties.
These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions.
--Jerry Skurnik
14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good
Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy .
--anonymous tipster
15. Annals of Justice in 1999
Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense .
-- anonymous tipster
16. Get Me a New Century, Quick
A sitting president was accused of rape.
--Ananda Gupta
Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too.
17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999
In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent.
--Walt Mossberg, "Personal Technology" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column)
18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999
General Pinochet
--Jodie Maurer
19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999
The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late.
--Josh Pollack
20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999
The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least.
--Samir Raiyani
Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters; Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters; New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters; KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.
| Who died in 1999? | [
"Jim Landau",
"Mel Torme",
"Susan Hoechstetter",
"Thomas Harris"
] | 1 | false |
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