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According to the author, how has the importance of kin-selection changed over human evolution?
Kin-selection is more important now than ever before
There has been no change to the importance of kin-selection over human evolution
Helping your kin continues to be important to pass along traits of kinship through the population as a whole
Traits for kinship are throughout the entire human population now, thus supporting only kin is less important in the modern world for kinship to persist
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
How does the author layer ethics into the discussion of kinship?
Humans have never considered natural behavior in animals to be unethical
Natural behaviors in the animal kingdom always lead humans to do what is ethically “good”
The ethics discussion is unrelated to the kinship arguments
Just because a behavior is natural to animals does not mean it is considered ethical
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
Does the author argue that ethics or kinship are more important to modern humans?
No comparative argument is made
The author posits that kinship and ethics are equally important
The author posits that kinship is much more important, and natural behaviors explain the ethics
The author posits that ethical treatment of all humans regardless of kin-status is most important
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
Why does the author think it'll be tougher to connect with a daughter that you start raising when she's five years old?
The daughter might be apprehensive about spending extended time with an unknown adult.
The daughter will be confused as to why you began parenting at that point rather than earlier.
The daughter might not consider you a proper biological match for a parent.
The daughter didn't spend time with you (nor did you with her) when she was little, so lots of bonding time was lost.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
What is a conclusion the author would want you to draw from the article?
If you're a mother who just adopted a child you'll naturally produce excess amounts of oxytocin.
If you're a biological parent you should supplement your naturally produced oxytocin with Pitocin.
If you adopted a child it would be bad for you to take Pitocin in their developmental stages.
Oxytocin and Pitocin are functionally similar but, but one of the two would naturally be produced by a biological mother.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
According to the article, why might it be a good idea scientifically to spend money and resources on homeless individuals rather than on gifts for your children?
You will undergo a mood boost from helping homeless individuals that is greater than the mood boost you'd experience from giving gifts to your children.
Your children will undergo a mood boost if they're old enough to understand the value of distributing resources to those who need it.
Your children will unconditionally love you regardless of what stimulation/gifts you provide, so those resources could be easily reallocated.
You're closely enough related to other non-familial humans that shared genes should not be the reasoning to give gifts to your kids over helping the homeless.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
What is the overall tone of this article? Are there any changes in tone over the course of the article?
The overall tone is academic, with very few tonal changes (if any).
The overall tone is academic, with a few emotional sections to evoke pathos.
The overall tone is calm, with only a few tonal changes when the author tries to drive home a point.
The overall tone is conversational, with the occasional funny moment or comedic example.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
What is NOT a scientific concept that is directly addressed in the article?
The extent to which DNA is shared between family members and non-family members.
The scientific differences between bonding with a biological or an adopted child.
The cultural and scientific debate around raising a parent raising an adopted child with a different race/ethnicity from their own.
How geographic and cultural differences impact family-raising strategies and bonding styles.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
Why is it that loving family members like siblings can lead to individual biological success?
If we help them survive tough experiences, we'll learn to not make those mistakes (increasing our biological odds of procreating and being evolutionarily successful).
If we help them succeed biologically, when they have kids they pass on DNA that matches some of our own.
Biologically speaking, we share in the successes the exact same way that our siblings do because of genetic similarity.
We want to see them succeed, so we experience chemical shifts when we see that they're happy.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
Of the following options, who might enjoy reading this the most?
A potential parent deciding between adopting a child and having a biological child.
A preteen who's adopted and wants to learn more about the differences between parenting of adopted and biological children.
A high schooler interested in learning more about family dynamics and the chemical/evolutionary processes with regard to parenting.
A creationist who wants to prove that evolution isn't real through the ways in which adopted and biological children are treated differently.
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
Of the following places, where would you most likely find a similar article to be available?
A pamphlet in a family therapist's office
A science textbook for eighth graders
An article in a popular newspaper's science section
The start of a high school paper about evolution and parenting
The Absurdity of Family Love Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. I have some, and I adore them. Every Christmas I become a slave to my camcorder. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, and so on. But now that the radiance of the yuletide season is fading, it's time to confront a sobering scientific truth: The more you think about the biology of parental love, the more absurd it seems. The same goes for love of kin generally--brothers, sisters, nephews, etc. Readers familiar with my obsessions may fear that this column is just another attempt to spoil everyone's fun, to replace the beautiful mystery of life with ugly Darwinian clarity. Actually, what I hope to dispel isn't pre-Darwinian mystery, but a kind of post-Darwinian mysticism, a confused exaltation of genetic affinity. You see the confusion when biological parents invoke "blood ties" to reclaim a child from adoptive parents. You see it when opponents of cross-ethnic adoption argue--as in a New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago--that we must respect "the strength of the biological and cultural ties that Indian tribes can offer their own children." In a sense, you see it every year around Christmas, when people pay lip service to the idea of universal brotherhood but believe in their hearts that it's ridiculous, that truly loving people to whom you aren't related violates some law of nature. Thanks to the biologist William Hamilton, it is now clear why people feel brotherly love in the literal sense--and sisterly love, maternal love, and paternal love. It's all due to the operation of "kin selection" during evolution. A greatly oversimplified textbook example: Two million years ago, two hominids, Loveless Bob and Loving Bob, stand on two different riverbanks, in identical situations. Each is watching his full sibling Bill drown. Loving Bob has a gene inclining him to love his brother and thus jump in the raging river, even though his risk of dying is 10 percent. Loveless Bob has no such gene, and thus stands on the bank wondering whether his brother's corpse will attract any large, edible fish. Which Bob's genes will survive the Darwinian reaper--genes for love or for cold indifference? Love triumphs. True, there's a one-in-10 chance that the love gene will sink along with Loving Bob. But consider the upside. There's a one-in-two chance that Bob's full sibling Bill has the same gene and, thus, that a successful rescue mission will pluck an otherwise doomed copy of the gene from the dustbin of history. Do the math, and you'll see that, over time, Loving Bobs send more genes to posterity than Loveless Bobs. As love genes spread at the expense of indifference genes, Loveless Bobs slowly become extinct. Die, selfish scum! Genes for sibling love come to permeate our species--as, in fact, they now do. So do genes for maternal love and paternal love. All brought to you by kin selection. As modern Darwinism gets popularized, the basic idea of kin selection is approaching the status of conventional wisdom. So are some attendant misconceptions. Misconception No. 1: Genes are smart . People often assume that kin-selected altruism is foolproof; that a gene can magically sense copies of itself in other organisms--or, at least, can somehow ascertain with perfect accuracy which organisms are close relatives of its own host organism and thus may carry copies of itself. In truth, genes aren't omniscient, or even sentient. If kin-selected genes are going to induce love of kin, they'll have to determine who qualifies as kin in some pedestrian and probably fallible way. For example: Back when Loving Bob was 6 years old, if his mother was nursing some infant named Bill and sleeping by its side every night, there's a very good chance that Bill was Bob's sibling. So a gene disposing Bob to love children whom he sees his mother nurturing could spread through the population until everyone obeys the same rule. But this rule would misfire now and then, when a mother is for some reason nurturing a non-offspring. It's just that the misfiring wouldn't happen often enough to greatly dilute the genetic math favoring the gene's proliferation. Little is known about which rules for identifying kin--"kin-recognition mechanisms"--do operate in our species. But clearly, they are fallible. Even mothers, who you'd think would have a damn good idea of who their offspring are, can in principle be fooled. When hospital staffers for some reason handed hours-old Kimberly Mays to a mother who was not hers, the mother's kin-recognition mechanisms--a k a bonding processes--kicked in. This woman wound up loving Kimberly like a daughter (though the mother died two years later, so that Kimberly was reared mostly by a stepmother). Meanwhile, Kimberly's genetic mother, having missed years of bonding, can never love Kimberly quite like her own child, even though Kimberly is her own child. Because genetic relationship per se doesn't matter. This irrelevance of genes is why surrogate motherhood is so messy. Even when, thanks to in vitro fertilization, the birth mother is unrelated to the fetus she carries, she will, upon giving birth, fall in love with the child. During evolution, after all, having a baby come out of your womb was reasonably strong evidence of kinship. The power of the hormones that govern this bonding is familiar to anyone who has watched a woman clutch her just-born child and turn into a love-drunk cuddle-bunny. (When my wife went through this magic moment, I briefly considered snatching the baby and replacing it with an 8-by-10 glossy of myself.) This hormonal power was also observed by researchers studying oxytocin, a hormone that's present in human and other mammalian mothers at birth. The researchers put it in a syringe and used it to shatter all previous records for cuddling among laboratory rats. By the way, the synthetic version of oxytocin, Pitocin, is what doctors use to induce labor. Misconception No. 2: People are smart--or, at least, they are smart Darwinian robots . Darwinian theory does posit that homo sapiens were "designed" to get their genes into the next generation, but not that they were designed to do so consciously and rationally. As surrogate mothers have proved, knowing that you've given no genes to an infant needn't stop the bonding process. Thus, "kin- recognition mechanism" is a doubly misleading term--first because, as we've seen, the mechanism doesn't positively identify kin, but just identifies factors correlated with kinship; and second because people aren't really aware of doing the identifying. We don't think, "There's strong evidence that she's my daughter, so I adore her." More like, "God but my daughter's adorable." It is good news for adoptive parents that neither genetic relationship nor conscious awareness of genetic relationship is a prerequisite for love. Still, it is bad news that maternal bonding begins with hormones at birth. It is also bad news that breast-feeding, which adoptive mothers usually can't do, releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. Then again, there is no reason in principle that adoptive parents couldn't take Pitocin once a day for synthetic bonding sessions. (Oxytocin seems to be part of the bonding formula in men, too.) Besides, some genetic mothers aren't conscious at birth, and many don't breast-feed, yet they all nonetheless wind up loving their kids. As the many successful adoptive parents know, lots of the magic moments that add up to durabonding have nothing to do with birthing or breast-feeding. (Tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow ... ) Anyway, the main point is that when genetic parents give up a child for adoption and have second thoughts weeks, months, or even years later, their appeals to blood ties should count for zilch. Their love of their child, and their child's love of them, depends not on genetic math but on a long and complex chain of bonding, much of which they have already voluntarily missed out on. Similarly, the idea that Native American babies, or black babies, or whatever, have some mystical genetic affinity with their "own" kind is silly. Obviously, cross-ethnic adoption is dicey. It draws sidelong glances and playground taunts, and it may give the adopted child an identity crisis. But it won't do this because of some ancestral memory in the genes. As attitudes change, cross-ethnic adoption will get easier; and as cross-ethnic adoption gets more common, attitudes will change. (There are other pop-genetics arguments against cross-ethnic adoption, and against adoption in general. One is that genes influence personality so powerfully that mixing unrelated siblings is like mixing oil and water. This idea is .) Misconception No. 3: Our genes, though perhaps not real smart, aren't downright stupid . Here we come, at last, to the true absurdity of familial love. As we've seen, the genes that sponsor it flourished by encouraging an "altruism" that was, in fact, self-serving at the genetic level (the inexorable triumph of Loving Bob's genes). As we've also seen, these genes can be "fooled" into encouraging altruism toward non-kin, altruism that presumably is not self-serving at the genetic level. Still, you might argue, in defense of your genes, they usually direct familial love toward genuine kin, and thus usually succeed in being efficiently selfish. Wrong! When genes confine altruism to kin, and deny it to needy non-kin, they are in fact failing spectacularly to be efficiently selfish. Because nowadays, copies of these genes do reside in non-kin--in your next-door neighbor and, for that matter, your worst enemy. After all, the Darwinian logic behind love of kin was so relentless that these genes permeated our entire species! Loveless Bob is extinct, remember? You can be forgiven for doubting my logic. People like me, in writing about kin selection, often talk about full siblings sharing "half their genes," implying that nonrelatives share none. But in truth, you share virtually all your genes with any randomly selected homo sapien on any continent. What people like me really mean is that full siblings share half of any genes that are newly minted--genes that have recently arisen and on which natural selection is just starting to pass judgment. Genes that natural selection fully endorsed long ago--the basic genes for hunger, for lust, for familial love--are in everyone. So genes that originally flourished by bestowing love with discerning selfishness--by discriminating against people not containing copies of themselves--now, having spread through the species, discriminate against people who do contain copies! You may doubt that natural selection, a process that supposedly maximizes genetic selfishness, could fail so abjectly to do so. But it's true. . So this past holiday season, as you rushed to buy presents for your kids or your siblings or your nieces or nephews, impelled by "selfishly" altruistic genes, you were operating under flawed Darwinian logic. These "selfish" genes could do just as much for themselves by encouraging you to instead spend your money on the beggar outside the department store. In fact, they could do more, since the beggar is closer to perishing than your relatives are. (Also, the beggar might buy something useful such as food, as opposed to a hair-eating Cabbage Patch doll.) But our genes are too stupid to so deftly serve their own welfare. Not that I attach much weight to what is and isn't "good" from the standpoint of genetic self-interest. As virtually all ethical philosophers who have pondered the matter agree, it doesn't make sense to model our moral values on the logic of nature anyway; to infer ought from is --to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"--only leads to moral confusion. For example, you might, after observing the natural behavior of praying mantises, be tempted to conclude that it is morally good for females to eat males after sex--and this, I submit, would be a repugnant and wrongheaded doctrine! (Though slightly less repugnant than the idea of eating males before the sex.) Most people implicitly recognize the naturalistic fallacy in some contexts. They sense that there's something visceral about, say, malice; yet they'll tell you (when not in its thrall) that they disapprove of it. It's obvious, they believe, that the natural strength of hatred is not a good thing. They're right. What is equally right, but a bit less obvious, is that the "natural" limits of love aren't necessarily good either. And, on close inspection, these limits turn out not to be all that rigorously "natural" anyway.
How many people were living on the moon before the relief ship arrived?
5
4
7
6
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
How did Klein feel about leaving his wife to go to the moon?
He felt bad she threw a fit about it
He spent a lot of time sitting and thinking about her
He knew she was happy to see him go
He didn't want to leave but was motivated by the pay
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
Why does Chapman always inspect the men's equipment before they go outside?
He's gone a little crazy from being on the moon too long
It's his assigned duty
He doesn't think they can look after themselves
He doesn't want them to join Dixon
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
Why did Chapman feel embarrassed?
He shared that he wanted to go to a burlesque house
He shared how much he missed people
He told his coworker about his girlfriend
He shared that he wanted to be naked outdoors
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
How does Chapman feel about being relieved from his duty?
Proud to pass on the duty to such a worthy colleague
Worried that the younger astronaut will ruin what he accomplished
Slighted that a younger scientist was offered the role in his place
Elated to finally be released
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
What is the relationship like between Dahl and Chapman?
They were adversaries in university but came to support each other living together on the moon
Friendly colleagues who went to university together to train for space
They are brothers in-law and Dahl is eager to return to his wife
Colleagues, but they are not friends
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
What are the living conditions of the astronauts on the moon?
It’s almost the same at their life on Earth
They are able to grow food
They sleep strapped into vertical beds
They have artificial gravity in their living quarters
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
What makes Chapman so qualified to train crews on the moon?
His attention to scientific details
His lack of ties back home on Earth
His mechanical background and military training
His technical skills and leadership
The Reluctant Heroes By FRANK M. ROBINSON Illustrated by DON SIBLEY Pioneers have always resented their wanderlust, hated their hardships. But the future brings a new grudge—when pioneers stay put and scholars do the exploring! The very young man sat on the edge of the sofa and looked nervous. He carefully studied his fingernails and ran his hands through his hair and picked imaginary lint off the upholstery. "I have a chance to go with the first research expedition to Venus," he said. The older man studied the very young man thoughtfully and then leaned over to his humidor and offered him a cigaret. "It's nice to have the new air units now. There was a time when we had to be very careful about things like smoking." The very young man was annoyed. "I don't think I want to go," he blurted. "I don't think I would care to spend two years there." The older man blew a smoke ring and watched it drift toward the air exhaust vent. "You mean you would miss it here, the people you've known and grown up with, the little familiar things that have made up your life here. You're afraid the glamor would wear off and you would get to hate it on Venus." The very young man nodded miserably. "I guess that's it." "Anything else?" The very young man found his fingernails extremely fascinating again and finally said, in a low voice, "Yes, there is." "A girl?" A nod confirmed this. It was the older man's turn to look thoughtful. "You know, I'm sure, that psychologists and research men agree that research stations should be staffed by couples. That is, of course, as soon as it's practical." "But that might be a long time!" the very young man protested. "It might be—but sometimes it's sooner than you think. And the goal is worth it." "I suppose so, but—" The older man smiled. "Still the reluctant heroes," he said, somewhat to himself. Chapman stared at the radio key. Three years on the Moon and they didn't want him to come back. Three years on the Moon and they thought he'd be glad to stay for more. Just raise his salary or give him a bonus, the every-man-has-his-price idea. They probably thought he liked it there. Oh, sure, he loved it. Canned coffee, canned beans, canned pills, and canned air until your insides felt as though they were plated with tin. Life in a cramped, smelly little hut where you could take only ten steps in any one direction. Their little scientific home of tomorrow with none of the modern conveniences, a charming place where you couldn't take a shower, couldn't brush your teeth, and your kidneys didn't work right. And for double his salary they thought he'd be glad to stay for another year and a half. Or maybe three. He should probably be glad he had the opportunity. The key started to stutter again, demanding an answer. He tapped out his reply: " No! " There was a silence and then the key stammered once more in a sudden fit of bureaucratic rage. Chapman stuffed a rag under it and ignored it. He turned to the hammocks, strung against the bulkhead on the other side of the room. The chattering of the key hadn't awakened anybody; they were still asleep, making the animal noises that people usually make in slumber. Dowden, half in the bottom hammock and half on the floor, was snoring peacefully. Dahl, the poor kid who was due for stopover, was mumbling to himself. Julius Klein, with that look of ineffable happiness on his face, looked as if he had just squirmed under the tent to his personal idea of heaven. Donley and Bening were lying perfectly still, their covers not mussed, sleeping very lightly. Lord, Chapman thought, I'll be happy when I can see some other faces. "What'd they want?" Klein had one eyelid open and a questioning look on his face. "They wanted me to stay until the next relief ship lands," Chapman whispered back. "What did you say?" He shrugged. "No." "You kept it short," somebody else whispered. It was Donley, up and sitting on the side of his hammock. "If it had been me, I would have told them just what they could do about it." The others were awake now, with the exception of Dahl who had his face to the bulkhead and a pillow over his head. Dowden rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Sore, aren't you?" "Kind of. Who wouldn't be?" "Well, don't let it throw you. They've never been here on the Moon. They don't know what it's like. All they're trying to do is get a good man to stay on the job a while longer." " All they're trying to do," Chapman said sarcastically. "They've got a fat chance." "They think you've found a home here," Donley said. "Why the hell don't you guys shut up until morning?" Dahl was awake, looking bitter. "Some of us still have to stay here, you know. Some of us aren't going back today." No, Chapman thought, some of us aren't going back. You aren't. And Dixon's staying, too. Only Dixon isn't ever going back. Klein jerked his thumb toward Dahl's bunk, held a finger to his lips, and walked noiselessly over to the small electric stove. It was his day for breakfast duty. The others started lacing up their bunks, getting ready for their last day of work on the Moon. In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth. And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home. He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. A hundred yards from the research bunker he could make out the small mound of stones and the forlorn homemade cross, jury-rigged out of small condensed milk tins slid over crossed iron bars. You could still see the footprints in the powdery soil where the group had gathered about the grave. It had been more than eighteen months ago, but there was no wind to wear those tracks away. They'd be there forever. That's what happened to guys like Dixon, Chapman thought. On the Moon, one mistake could use up your whole quota of chances. Klein came back with the coffee. Chapman took a cup, gagged, and forced himself to swallow the rest of it. It had been in the can for so long you could almost taste the glue on the label. Donley was warming himself over his cup, looking thoughtful. Dowden and Bening were struggling into their suits, getting ready to go outside. Dahl was still sitting on his hammock, trying to ignore them. "Think we ought to radio the space station and see if they've left there yet?" Klein asked. "I talked to them on the last call," Chapman said. "The relief ship left there twelve hours ago. They should get here"—he looked at his watch—"in about six and a half hours." "Chap, you know, I've been thinking," Donley said quietly. "You've been here just twice as long as the rest of us. What's the first thing you're going to do once you get back?" It hit them, then. Dowden and Bening looked blank for a minute and blindly found packing cases to sit on. The top halves of their suits were still hanging on the bulkhead. Klein lowered his coffee cup and looked grave. Even Dahl glanced up expectantly. "I don't know," Chapman said slowly. "I guess I was trying not to think of that. I suppose none of us have. We've been like little kids who have waited so long for Christmas that they just can't believe it when it's finally Christmas Eve." Klein nodded in agreement. "I haven't been here three years like you have, but I think I know what you mean." He warmed up to it as the idea sank in. "Just what the hell are you going to do?" "Nothing very spectacular," Chapman said, smiling. "I'm going to rent a room over Times Square, get a recording of a rikky-tik piano, and drink and listen to the music and watch the people on the street below. Then I think I'll see somebody." "Who's the somebody?" Donley asked. Chapman grinned. "Oh, just somebody. What are you going to do, Dick?" "Well, I'm going to do something practical. First of all, I want to turn over all my geological samples to the government. Then I'm going to sell my life story to the movies and then—why, then, I think I'll get drunk!" Everybody laughed and Chapman turned to Klein. "How about you, Julius?" Klein looked solemn. "Like Dick, I'll first get rid of my obligations to the expedition. Then I think I'll go home and see my wife." They were quiet. "I thought all members of the groups were supposed to be single," Donley said. "They are. And I can see their reasons for it. But who could pass up the money the Commission was paying?" "If I had to do it all over again? Me," said Donley promptly. They laughed. Somebody said: "Go play your record, Chap. Today's the day for it." The phonograph was a small, wind-up model that Chapman had smuggled in when he had landed with the First group. The record was old and the shellac was nearly worn off, but the music was good. Way Back Home by Al Lewis. They ran through it twice. They were beginning to feel it now, Chapman thought. They were going to go home in a little while and the idea was just starting to sink in. "You know, Chap," Donley said, "it won't seem like the same old Moon without you on it. Why, we'll look at it when we're out spooning or something and it just won't have the same old appeal." "Like they say in the army," Bening said, "you never had it so good. You found a home here." The others chimed in and Chapman grinned. Yesterday or a week ago they couldn't have done it. He had been there too long and he had hated it too much. The party quieted down after a while and Dowden and Bening finished getting into their suits. They still had a section of the sky to map before they left. Donley was right after them. There was an outcropping of rock that he wanted a sample of and some strata he wished to investigate. And the time went faster when you kept busy. Chapman stopped them at the lock. "Remember to check your suits for leaks," he warned. "And check the valves of your oxygen tanks." Donley looked sour. "I've gone out at least five hundred times," he said, "and you check me each time." "And I'd check you five hundred more," Chapman said. "It takes only one mistake. And watch out for blisters under the pumice crust. You go through one of those and that's it, brother." Donley sighed. "Chap, you watch us like an old mother hen. You see we check our suits, you settle our arguments, you see that we're not bored and that we stay healthy and happy. I think you'd blow our noses for us if we caught cold. But some day, Chap old man, you're gonna find out that your little boys can watch out for themselves!" But he checked his suit for leaks and tested the valve of his tank before he left. Only Klein and Chapman were left in the bunker. Klein was at the work table, carefully labeling some lichen specimens. "I never knew you were married," Chapman said. Klein didn't look up. "There wasn't much sense in talking about it. You just get to thinking and wanting—and there's nothing you can do about it. You talk about it and it just makes it worse." "She let you go without any fuss, huh?" "No, she didn't make any fuss. But I don't think she liked to see me go, either." He laughed a little. "At least I hope she didn't." They were silent for a while. "What do you miss most, Chap?" Klein asked. "Oh, I know what we said a little while ago, but I mean seriously." Chapman thought a minute. "I think I miss the sky," he said quietly. "The blue sky and the green grass and trees with leaves on them that turn color in the Fall. I think, when I go back, that I'd like to go out in a rain storm and strip and feel the rain on my skin." He stopped, feeling embarrassed. Klein's expression was encouraging. "And then I think I'd like to go downtown and just watch the shoppers on the sidewalks. Or maybe go to a burlesque house and smell the cheap perfume and the popcorn and the people sweating in the dark." He studied his hands. "I think what I miss most is people—all kinds of people. Bad people and good people and fat people and thin people, and people I can't understand. People who wouldn't know an atom from an artichoke. And people who wouldn't give a damn. We're a quarter of a million miles from nowhere, Julius, and to make it literary, I think I miss my fellow man more than anything." "Got a girl back home?" Klein asked almost casually. "Yes." "You're not like Dahl. You've never mentioned it." "Same reason you didn't mention your wife. You get to thinking about it." Klein flipped the lid on the specimen box. "Going to get married when you get back?" Chapman was at the port again, staring out at the bleak landscape. "We hope to." "Settle down in a small cottage and raise lots of little Chapmans, eh?" Chapman nodded. "That's the only future," Klein said. He put away the box and came over to the port. Chapman moved over so they both could look out. "Chap." Klein hesitated a moment. "What happened to Dixon?" "He died," Chapman said. "He was a good kid, all wrapped up in science. Being on the Moon was the opportunity of a lifetime. He thought so much about it that he forgot a lot of little things—like how to stay alive. The day before the Second group came, he went out to finish some work he was interested in. He forgot to check for leaks and whether or not the valve on his tank was all the way closed. We couldn't get to him in time." "He had his walkie-talkie with him?" "Yes. It worked fine, too. We heard everything that went through his mind at the end." Klein's face was blank. "What's your real job here, Chap? Why does somebody have to stay for stopover?" "Hell, lots of reasons, Julius. You can't get a whole relief crew and let them take over cold. They have to know where you left off. They have to know where things are, how things work, what to watch out for. And then, because you've been here a year and a half and know the ropes, you have to watch them to see that they stay alive in spite of themselves. The Moon's a new environment and you have to learn how to live in it. There's a lot of things to learn—and some people just never learn." "You're nursemaid, then." "I suppose you could call it that." Klein said, "You're not a scientist, are you?" "No, you should know that. I came as the pilot of the first ship. We made the bunker out of parts of the ship so there wasn't anything to go back on. I'm a good mechanic and I made myself useful with the machinery. When it occurred to us that somebody was going to have to stay over, I volunteered. I thought the others were so important that it was better they should take their samples and data back to Earth when the first relief ship came." "You wouldn't do it again, though, would you?" "No, I wouldn't." "Do you think Dahl will do as good a job as you've done here?" Chapman frowned. "Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I don't believe I care. I've put in my time; it's somebody else's turn now. He volunteered for it. I think I was fair in explaining all about the job when you talked it over among yourselves." "You did, but I don't think Dahl's the man for it. He's too young, too much of a kid. He volunteered because he thought it made him look like a hero. He doesn't have the judgment that an older man would have. That you have." Chapman turned slowly around and faced Klein. "I'm not the indispensable man," he said slowly, "and even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm sorry if Dahl is young. So was I. I've lost three years up here. And I don't intend to lose any more." Klein held up his hands. "Look, Chap, I didn't mean you should stay. I know how much you hate it and the time you put in up here. It's just—" His voice trailed away. "It's just that I think it's such a damn important job." Klein had gone out in a last search for rock lichens and Chapman enjoyed one of his relatively few moments of privacy. He wandered over to his bunk and opened his barracks bag. He checked the underwear and his toothbrush and shaving kit for maybe the hundredth time and pushed the clothing down farther in the canvas. It was foolish because the bag was already packed and had been for a week. He remembered stalling it off for as long as he could and then the quiet satisfaction about a week before, when he had opened his small gear locker and transferred its meager belongings to the bag. He hadn't actually needed to pack, of course. In less than twenty-four hours he'd be back on Earth where he could drown himself in toothpaste and buy more tee shirts than he could wear in a lifetime. He could leave behind his shorts and socks and the outsize shirts he had inherited from—who was it? Driesbach?—of the First group. Dahl could probably use them or maybe one of the boys in the Third. But it wasn't like going home unless you packed. It was part of the ritual, like marking off the last three weeks in pencil on the gray steel of the bulkhead beside his hammock. Just a few hours ago, when he woke up, he had made the last check mark and signed his name and the date. His signature was right beneath Dixon's. He frowned when he thought of Dixon and slid back the catch on the top of the bag and locked it. They should never have sent a kid like Dixon to the Moon. He had just locked the bag when he heard the rumble of the airlock and the soft hiss of air. Somebody had come back earlier than expected. He watched the inner door swing open and the spacesuited figure clump in and unscrew its helmet. Dahl. He had gone out to help Dowden on the Schmidt telescope. Maybe Dowden hadn't needed any help, with Bening along. Or more likely, considering the circumstances, Dahl wasn't much good at helping anybody today. Dahl stripped off his suit. His face was covered with light beads of sweat and his eyes were frightened. He moistened his lips slightly. "Do—do you think they'll ever have relief ships up here more often than every eighteen months, Chap? I mean, considering the advance of—" "No," Chapman interrupted bluntly. "I don't. Not at least for ten years. The fuel's too expensive and the trip's too hazardous. On freight charges alone you're worth your weight in platinum when they send you here. Even if it becomes cheaper, Bob, it won't come about so it will shorten stopover right away." He stopped, feeling a little sorry for Dahl. "It won't be too bad. There'll be new men up here and you'll pass a lot of time getting to know them." "Well, you see," Dahl started, "that's why I came back early. I wanted to see you about stopover. It's that—well, I'll put it this way." He seemed to be groping for an easy way to say what he wanted to. "I'm engaged back home. Really nice girl, Chap, you'd like her if you knew her." He fumbled in his pocket and found a photograph and put it on the desk. "That's a picture of Alice, taken at a picnic we were on together." Chapman didn't look. "She—we—expected to be married when I got back. I never told her about stopover, Chap. She thinks I'll be home tomorrow. I kept thinking, hoping, that maybe somehow—" He was fumbling it badly, Chapman thought. "You wanted to trade places with me, didn't you, Bob? You thought I might stay for stopover again, in your place?" It hurt to look in Dahl's eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was trying desperately to stop what he was about to do, but just couldn't help himself. "Well, yes, more or less. Oh, God, Chap, I know you want to go home! But I couldn't ask any of the others; you were the only one who could, the only one who was qualified!" Dahl looked as though he was going to be sick. Chapman tried to recall all he knew about him. Dahl, Robert. Good mathematician. Graduate from one of the Ivy League schools. Father was a manufacturer of stoves or something. It still didn't add, not quite. "You know I don't like it here any more than you do," Chapman said slowly. "I may have commitments at home, too. What made you think I would change my mind?" Dahl took the plunge. "Well, you see," he started eagerly, too far gone to remember such a thing as pride, "you know my father's pretty well fixed. We would make it worth your while, Chap." He was feverish. "It would mean eighteen more months, Chap, but they'd be well-paid months!" Chapman felt tired. The good feeling he had about going home was slowly evaporating. "If you have any report to make, I think you had better get at it," he cut in, keeping all the harshness he felt out of his voice. "It'll be too late after the relief ship leaves. It'll be easier to give the captain your report than try to radio it back to Earth from here." He felt sorrier for Dahl than he could ever remember having felt for anybody. Long after going home, Dahl would remember this. It would eat at him like a cancer. Cowardice is the one thing for which no man ever forgives himself. Donley was eating a sandwich and looking out the port, so, naturally, he saw the ship first. "Well, whaddya know!" he shouted. "We got company!" He dashed for his suit. Dowden and Bening piled after him and all three started for the lock. Chapman was standing in front of it. "Check your suits," he said softly. "Just be sure to check." "Oh, what the hell, Chap!" Donley started angrily. Then he shut up and went over his suit. He got to his tank and turned white. Empty. It was only half a mile to the relief rocket, so somebody would probably have got to him in time, but.... He bit his lips and got a full tank. Chapman and Klein watched them dash across the pumice, making the tremendous leaps they used to read about in the Sunday supplements. The port of the rocket had opened and tiny figures were climbing down the ladder. The small figures from the bunker reached them and did a short jig of welcome. Then the figures linked arms and started back. Chapman noticed one—it was probably Donley—pat the ship affectionately before he started back. They were in the lock and the air pumped in and then they were in the bunker, taking off their suits. The newcomers were impressed and solemn, very much aware of the tremendous responsibility that rested on their shoulders. Like Donley and Klein and the members of the Second group had been when they had landed. Like Chapman had been in the First. Donley and the others were all over them. How was it back on Earth? Who had won the series? Was so-and-so still teaching at the university? What was the international situation? Was the sky still blue, was the grass still green, did the leaves still turn color in the autumn, did people still love and cry and were there still people who didn't know what an atom was and didn't give a damn? Chapman had gone through it all before. But was Ginny still Ginny? Some of the men in the Third had their luggage with them. One of them—a husky, red-faced kid named Williams—was opening a box about a foot square and six inches deep. Chapman watched him curiously. "Well, I'll be damned!" Klein said. "Hey, guys, look what we've got here!" Chapman and the others crowded around and suddenly Donley leaned over and took a deep breath. In the box, covering a thick layer of ordinary dirt, was a plot of grass. They looked at it, awed. Klein put out his hand and laid it on top of the grass. "I like the feel of it," he said simply. Chapman cut off a single blade with his fingernail and put it between his lips. It had been years since he had seen grass and had the luxury of walking on it and lying on its cool thickness during those sultry summer nights when it was too hot to sleep indoors. Williams blushed. "I thought we could spare a little water for it and maybe use the ultraviolet lamp on it some of the time. Couldn't help but bring it along; it seemed sort of like a symbol...." He looked embarrassed. Chapman sympathized. If he had had any sense, he'd have tried to smuggle something like that up to the Moon instead of his phonograph. "That's valuable grass," Dahl said sharply. "Do you realize that at current freight rates up here, it's worth about ten dollars a blade?" Williams looked stricken and somebody said, "Oh, shut up, Dahl." One of the men separated from the group and came over to Chapman. He held out his hand and said, "My name's Eberlein. Captain of the relief ship. I understand you're in charge here?" Chapman nodded and shook hands. They hadn't had a captain on the First ship. Just a pilot and crew. Eberlein looked every inch a captain, too. Craggy face, gray hair, the firm chin of a man who was sure of himself. "You might say I'm in charge here," Chapman said. "Well, look, Mr. Chapman, is there any place where we can talk together privately?" They walked over to one corner of the bunker. "This is about as private as we can get, captain," Chapman said. "What's on your mind?" Eberlein found a packing crate and made himself comfortable. He looked at Chapman. "I've always wanted to meet the man who's spent more time here than anybody else," he began. "I'm sure you wanted to see me for more reasons than just curiosity." Eberlein took out a pack of cigarets. "Mind if I smoke?" Chapman jerked a thumb toward Dahl. "Ask him. He's in charge now." The captain didn't bother. He put the pack away. "You know we have big plans for the station," he said. "I hadn't heard of them." "Oh, yes, big plans . They're working on unmanned, open-side rockets now that could carry cargo and sheet steel for more bunkers like this. Enable us to enlarge the unit, have a series of bunkers all linked together. Make good laboratories and living quarters for you people." His eyes swept the room. "Have a little privacy for a change." Chapman nodded. "They could use a little privacy up here." The captain noticed the pronoun. "Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, Chapman. The Commission talked it over and they'd like to see you stay. They feel if they're going to enlarge it, add more bunkers and have more men up here, that a man of practical experience should be running things. They figure that you're the only man who's capable and who's had the experience." The captain vaguely felt the approach was all wrong. "Is that all?" Eberlein was ill at ease. "Naturally you'd be paid well. I don't imagine any man would like being here all the time. They're prepared to double your salary—maybe even a bonus in addition—and let you have full charge. You'd be Director of the Luna Laboratories." All this and a title too, Chapman thought. "That's it?" Chapman asked. Eberlein frowned. "Well, the Commission said they'd be willing to consider anything else you had in mind, if it was more money or...." "The answer is no," Chapman said. "I'm not interested in more money for staying because I'm not interested in staying. Money can't buy it, captain. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that you'd have to stay up here to appreciate that. "Bob Dahl is staying for stopover. If there's something important about the project or impending changes, perhaps you'd better tell him before you go." He walked away.
What best describes why Madison's initial feelings towards the Actuarvac were suspicious and skeptical?
He felt like he might become unemployed because of the Actuarvac.
He did not think the Actuarvac was competent enough for the job.
He wanted to continue to be favorited by McCain, but felt his favoritism was at stake because of the Actuarvac.
He felt the Actuarvac will hurt the well-being of Manhattan-Universal Insurance.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
What does Madison's selection in car choice after the flight tell about his physical character?
He is a debilitated man.
He is an old man.
He is a very muscular man.
He is a very tall man.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Given the information in the article, is Granite City likely making false insurance claims, and why?
Yes, since insurance is what keeps Granite City running.
No, because crime is rampant in Granite City.
No, because the people of Granite City are unusually prone to accidents/injury.
Yes, but not the type of false claims that Madison was investigating.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Given what was discovered in Granite City, is the Actuarvac correct in its suspicion of Granite City?
Yes, because it turns out Granite City was making false insurance claims.
No, because the Actuarvac was a highly flawed machine.
Yes, because Madison had to eventually investigate the city.
No, because Granite City was not making false insurance claims.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
According to Dr. Parnell, can the same fate affecting Granite City affect other places around the world?
No, because the people of Granite City are born with the mental problems that are plaguing them and cannot spread them.
Yes, because there are other places in the world exporting this same type of granite.
Yes, because Madison is already experiencing the same mental problems the people are having.
Yes, because the granite being shipped to other places out of Granite City is what is causing the problems for the people.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
What would best describe Madison's attitude towards Professor Parnell upon learning Parnell's reasoning for calling the people of Granite City "subhuman"?
Madison unquestionably believes Parnell's story.
Madison dismisses Parnell as a liar.
Madison pretends to believe Parnell's story for the mean-time.
Madison is reluctant to believe Parnell.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
How would Madison's perception of Granite City been different if he had not have met Professor Parnell?
His perception would have been unchanged because he would have figured out that Granite City was making false insurance claims on his own.
His perception of Granite City would have been much more positive without Professor Parnell's explanation of the city's grim secret.
His perception of Granite City would have stayed the same; however, he would have figured out the situation in Granite City much more quickly without Professor Parnell..
His perception of Granite City would have been misconstrued because he would have lacked an explanation to why the people of Granite City are the way that they are.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why did Madison investigate the manual record files prior to visiting Granite City?
To learn more about the Ozark Mountains.
To gather the necessary paperwork for his investigation.
To educate himself on the history of Granite City.
In order to hopefully discover some red-flag indicators of insurance fraud.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why did Madison drive a Rolls?
The manual gears were simpler to operate on the hills of Granite City.
He felt it was the only vehicle that fit his personality.
It was a good size and provided a smooth ride around the Ozark Mountains.
He was too tall for most models and disliked the business decisions of American automakers.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
What is the most likely reason for the lack of car insurance claims in Granite City?
The townspeople would be killed for making those kinds of claims.
The Actuarvac was more focused on large-scale claims.
It was very unsafe to drive any vehicles in Granite City.
The orchestrated fraud in Granite City was too complex and time-consuming to devote time to smaller claims.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why did Madison ultimately think gathering the large rock was a bad decision?
It was too heavy to carry around the city.
The Professor would eventually use it to prevent him from leaving.
The gun would have been a better option for self-defense.
It would begin to affect his memory later.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why was Madison thinking about a child eating ice cream as he investigated?
He was really hungry after seeing the workers' sandwich wrappers and craving something sweet.
The unique colorization of the granite looked like raspberry ice cream.
He missed his son, and eating ice cream together was a fond memory.
The haphazard way the granite was harvested and the bloody scene nearby reminded him of it.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
What is the likely cause of the proliferation of accidents in Granite City?
The altitude of the Ozark Mountains impairs the reasoning and logic of the townspeople.
The foolishness of the city's population.
The poor construction of the city's buildings and infrastructure.
Something about the granite creates an inability to predict when an accident may occur.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why does the population of Granite City want to keep their deficiency a secret?
They are not aware of their own psionic sterility.
They want to contaminate the entire world.
They are afraid bad publicity would lead to a drop in tourism.
They are scared of losing their livelihood.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why did the Professor call the people of Granite City "subhuman"?
He was exaggerating out of frustration with his inability to leave the city.
He harbored racist sentiments.
He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Their psionic deficiency rendered them incapable of essential human logic and reasoning.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Why did Madison start to believe the investigation was out of his league?
The odd behavior of specific townspeople made him feel uncomfortable.
He suspected there was a supernatural force at work in the quarry.
He wasn't equipped to handle claims for an entire city.
He felt there was a criminal undercurrent to the situation.
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
How many words are there in this story?
about 5323 words
about 4096 words
Sorry I don't know
about 4571 words
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
What can we infer from the longest sentence of this passage?
The speaker believes American cars are too small
The speaker feels American cars have transitioned from passenger cars to cargo trucks
the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting
It is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with students in Duke University
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
Who spoke the longest dialogue (one turn) in this story?
McCain
"I" (the one who tells the story)
Thompson
Parnell
DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON One little village couldn't have a monopoly on all the bad breaks in the world. They did, though! They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines. I know the Actuarvac made one purple passion of a job for me, the unpleasantly fatal results of which are still lingering with me. Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. "The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for. Then all that remains is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring customers." "Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been. McCain shuffled his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially." McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president. He took it like a man. "That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?" He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly typed notation on it. It said: Investigate the Ozark village of Granite City. "You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement." Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible plagiarism. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work. Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions. Four hours of flipping switches and looking at microfilm projections while a tawny redhead in a triangular fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone. I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it. There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars. Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion. Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went. We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated circumstances. There was one odd note in the melodic scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile accident from Granite City. I shut off the projector. It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong. Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims. Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened up. I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun. After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly to my spoil-sport interference. The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks. It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige. It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills. The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck. I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags. "Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window. "I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?" I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads. "We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?" "I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there." "Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City." "It's the house at the end of the street." "It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open." The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets." The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls. "You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally. "Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him. "Come back," he said, as if he had doubts. The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket. I have made smarter moves in my time. As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked. Half the panes in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place. My toe scuffed the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked. Moments later, the door opened. The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert. "Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him. "I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian name. You from the company?" "Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?" Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years." Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here." "First time," I said, sipping coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar. "You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?" "The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" "No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience." "But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." "Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "All right," he said grudgingly, "but you'll have to do it on foot." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders." "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub." I took a deep breath. "Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails." I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help." "Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous at night." "There's always a dawn." Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here." II The quarry was a mess. I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around. The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield. "What are you looking for, bud?" The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out." "This rock is part of it—" "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch of meatheaded ditch diggers—we are craftsmen. We have to figure a different way of getting out every piece of stone." "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "That you chose the wrong way so often," I said. Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen, Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any outsider coming in and interfering with that." "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me that I shouldn't have said that. The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly superior. I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest table playing twenty-one. Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register. "Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?" "I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice. "Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment." "You're sure you can send it? Right away?" "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. Haskel shrugged. "A man has to eat." The man called "the professor" came over and sat down two stools away, ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I didn't feel that I was licked or that the trip had been a failure. I had merely established to my intuitive satisfaction that the job was not in my field. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and caught the bright little eyes of Haskel, the proprietor, too. Finally, the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. We looked at each other across the shiny table and our beverage containers. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I left on my sabbatical five months ago. I have been here ever since." I looked at his clothes. "You must not have been very well fixed for a year's vacation, Professor." "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "I can understand why you want to go somewhere where people are more trusting in that case." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave this place. They think they can't let me go." "I don't see any shackles on you," I remarked. "Just because you can't see them," he growled, "doesn't mean they aren't there. Marshal Thompson has the only telephone in the village. He has politely refused to let me use it. I'm a suspicious and undesirable character; he's under no obligation to give me telephone privileges, he says. Haskel has the Post Office concession—the Telefax outfit behind the money box over there. He takes my letters but I never see him send them off. And I never get a reply." "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you from packing your dental floss and cutting out?" "Haskel has the only motor vehicle in town—a half-ton pick-up, a minuscule contrivance less than the size of a passenger car. He makes about one trip a week down into the city for supplies and package mail. He's been the only one in or out of Granite City for five months." It seemed incredible—more than that, unlikely, to me. "How about the granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell said. "They stockpile it and once a year the executive offices for the company back in Nashville runs in a portable monorail railroad up the side of the mountain to take it out. That won't be for another four months, as nearly as I can find out. I may not last that long." "How are you living?" I asked. "If they won't take your checks—" "I do odd jobs for people. They feed me, give me a little money sometimes." "I can see why you want to ride out with me," I said. "Haven't you ever thought of just walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." I nodded. "You have any papers, any identification, to back this up?" Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman !" "I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time." "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." "Look, I know the Klan is a growing organization but I can't go along with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well known that certain tribes suffer certain deficiencies due to diet, climate, et cetera. Some can't run, sing, use mathematics. The people of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. Their psionic senses have been impaired. They are completely devoid of any use of telepathy, precognition, telekinesis." "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities of a few recorded cases of supermen, but we have some, a trace. Granite City citizens have no psionic ability whatsoever, not even the little that you and I and the rest of the world have!" "You said you were Duke University, didn't you?" I mused. "Maybe you know what you are talking about; I've never been sure. But these people can't suffer very much from their lack of what you call psi ability." "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the bump in the road the way we can, or that that particular match will flare a little higher and burn their fingers. There are other things, as well. You'll find it is almost impossible to carry on a lengthy conversation with any of them—they have no telepathic ability, no matter how slight, to see through the semantic barrier. None of them can play ball. They don't have the unconscious psionic ability to influence the ball in flight. All of us can do that, even if the case of a 'Poltergeist' who can lift objects is rare." "Professor, you mean these people are holding you here simply so you won't go out and tell the rest of the world that they are submen?" "They don't want the world to know why they are psionically subnormal," he said crisply. "It's the granite ! I don't understand why myself. I'm not a physicist or a biologist. But for some reason the heavy concentration and particular pattern of the radioactive radiation in its matrix is responsible for both inhibiting the genes that transmit psi powers from generation to generation and affecting those abilities in the present generation. A kind of psionic sterility." "How do you know this?" "We haven't the time for all that. But think about it. What else could it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the world, spreading the contamination. I want to stop that contamination. To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility; they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy and the rest to be affected." "Frankly," I said, hedging only a little, "I don't know what to make of your story. This is something to be decided by somebody infallible—like the Pope or the President or Board Chairman of Manhattan-Universal. But the first thing to do is get you out of here. We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to stay away from the rock as much as possible, but it's getting to me." I should have remembered something then. But, naturally, I didn't.
What would best describe Asa and Dorr's relationship?
Asa is afraid of Dorr, especially after being framed.
They have disdain for each other considering that Dorr is the reason behind why Asa was influenced to live on the treacherous Jordan's Planet.
They are largely unfamilar with each other, despite the minor disputes they have had.
They dislike each other because they are in a struggle for dominance over Slider egg supply and the Hazeltyne company.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
How would Asa's decision on where to become a changeling been affected if the pay range to work as a muck man on Jordan's Planet was not as high as it was originally listed in the article?
Asa would have become a muck man anyways because that was his original intention.
He would have chosen to become a changeling at another place with higher pay.
Asa would have still opted to become a muck man, but he would have largely been dissapointed with the low pay rate.
He would have opted to spend the five years in prison instead because a low pay rate would not justify the dangers of working on Jordan's Planet.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What was the advantage of muck men being shaped like frogs?
A frog-shaped body helped better cross the terrain on Jordan's Planet.
A frog-shaped body would ensure prisoners could not leave Jordan's Planet.
The frog body would be so grotesque that it would make it nearly impossible for prisoners to finish their sentence.
A frog-shaped body warded off Sliders.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What can you infer about the living conditions on Jordan's Planet?
Only a human that has a frog-like body can survive the terrain.
It is a dangerous land, but only at night.
Completely inhospitable for human life without proper interventions.
It is similar to Earth because humans and Earth-like animals can live on it.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What were the consequences of Asa meeting Kershaw and Furston?
Kershaw and Furston taught Asa how to deal with Dorr and his devious tactics.
Kershaw and Furston discouraged Asa's hopes of being a successful muck man.
Kershaw and Furston were essential in helping Asa assimilate to his job as a muck man.
Furston saved Kershaw and Asa's life after running into the Slider.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What would best describe Harriet's attitude towards Dorr?
She is saddened by the way he treats the muck men.
She gets periodically frustrated with his mannerisms.
She fears Dorr because he is very powerful over the Hazeltyne company.
She believes he is not competent to run the Hazeltyne company.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What would have been the consequence if Harriet did not come back for Asa with the helicopter?
He would have not learned why Dorr did not come back with the hellicopter.
Asa would not have been able to escape the muck by getting onto the hellicopter and returning.
Asa would have been eaten by a Slider.
Asa would have been able to keep the Slider egg for himself.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
Why would a company think it is a logical idea to let prisoners work as muck men on Jordan's Planet?
Prisoners are more efficient workers than people who are not in prison.
It is an appropriate punishment that will balance out the crimes committed by prisoners.
The Hazeltyne company can only afford to employ prisoners.
It is a very dangerous job that only prisoners would be desperate enough to do to lower their prison sentence.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What would best describe Asa's motive for working as a muck man?
He is motivated by the high pay rate.
It was his dream to be a muck man.
He wants to prove he was framed by Dorr.
He is seeking revenge.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What seems to be the primary benefit of becoming a changeling?
Regeneration of bodily organs.
Extended life expectancy.
Developing superhuman powers.
Efficient labor and reduced prison sentences.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What was Asa's true motivation for choosing Jordan's Planet?
He wanted to serve a reduced sentence.
The conversions made mud-dwelling more comfortable.
The bankroll was far greater than on other planets.
Studying Slider eggs in their natural habitat.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
What happens to a changeling after their sentence is served?
They continue to hunt Slider eggs for the Hazeltynes.
They maintain their conversion as a permanent reminder of their crimes.
They can choose to stay on their new planet or return to Earth.
They are converted back to their normal body and returned to Earth.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
Why would Tom Dorr frame Asa Graybar for stealing the Slider egg?
He was protecting himself from being a potential suspect in the theft.
He was protecting Harriet from incrimination.
He was getting paid a small fortune to do so.
Graybar's discoveries could ruin the Hazeltyne business.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
Why did Furston instruct Graybar to eat berries?
To help him acclimate to his new changeling diet.
To help him develop an immunity to toxic plant life.
So that he would have enough energy to hunt Slider eggs.
To demonstrate the impossibility of escaping imprisonment and seeking refuge on Jordan's Planet.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
Why did Harriet crash the helicopter?
She thought the dead Slider was alive and tried to kill it.
She was using it as a projectile to kill Graybar.
She didn't know how to fly one.
The gravity on Jordan's Planet was different from that on Earth.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
The changelings on Jordan's Planet most closely resembled what Earth-dwelling creature?
A salamander.
A worm.
A gorilla.
A frog.
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
How many sentences are there in the longest dialogue?
about 20
about 15
about 10
about 5
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
How many words are there in the longest sentence in this story?
about 28
about 22
about 42
about 38
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
The longest dialogue is spoken by whom in this story?
A doctor from the Conversion Corps
Jumpy
Asa
Tom Dorr
MUCK MAN BY FREMONT DODGE The work wasn't hard, but there were some sacrifices. You had to give up hope and freedom—and being human! I The girl with the Slider egg glittering in her hair watched the bailiff lead Asa Graybar out of the courtroom. He recognized her as old Hazeltyne's daughter Harriet, no doubt come to see justice done. She didn't have the hothouse-flower look Asa would have expected in a girl whose father owned the most valuable of the planetary franchises. She was not afraid to meet his eye, the eye of a judicially certified criminal. There was, perhaps, a crease of puzzlement in her brow, as if she had thought crimes were committed by shriveled, rat-faced types, and not by young biological engineers who still affected crewcuts. Tom Dorr, Hazeltyne's general manager, was her escort. Asa felt certain, without proof, that Dorr was the man who had framed him for the charge of grand theft by secreting a fresh Slider egg in his laboratory. The older man stared at Asa coldly as he was led out of the courtroom and down the corridor back to jail. Jumpy, Asa's cellmate, took one look at his face as he was put back behind bars. "Guilty," Jumpy said. Asa glared at him. "I know, I know," Jumpy said hastily. "You were framed. But what's the rap?" "Five or one." "Take the five," Jumpy advised. "Learn basket-weaving in a nice air-conditioned rehab clinic. A year on a changeling deal will seem a lot longer, even if you're lucky enough to live through it." Asa took four steps to the far wall of the cell, stood there briefly with his head bent and turned to face Jumpy. "Nope," Asa said softly. "I'm going into a conversion tank. I'm going to be a muck man, Jumpy. I'm going out to Jordan's Planet and hunt Slider eggs." "Smuggling? It won't work." Asa didn't answer. The Hazeltyne company had gone after him because he had been working on a method of keeping Slider eggs alive. The Hazeltyne company would be happy to see him mark time for five years of so-called social reorientation. But if he could get out to Jordan's Planet, with his physiology adapted to the environment of that wretched world, he could study the eggs under conditions no laboratory could duplicate. He might even be able to cause trouble for Hazeltyne. His only problem would be staying alive for a year. An interview with a doctor from the Conversion Corps was required for all persons who elected changeling status. The law stated that potential changelings must be fully informed of the rights and hazards of altered shape before they signed a release. The requirement held whether or not the individual, like Asa, was already experienced. By the time humanity traveled to the stars, medical biology had made it possible to regenerate damaged or deficient organs of the body. Regeneration was limited only by advanced age. Sometime after a man's two hundredth year his body lost the ability to be coaxed into growing new cells. A fifth set of teeth was usually one's last. As long as senescence could be staved off, however, any man could have bulging biceps and a pencil waist, if he could pay for the treatment. Until the medical associations declared such treatments unethical there was even a short fad of deliberate deformities, with horns at the temples particularly popular. From regeneration it was a short step to specialized regrowth. The techniques were perfected to adapt humans to the dozen barely habitable worlds man had discovered. Even on Mars, the only planet outside Earth in the solar system where the human anatomy was remotely suitable, a man could work more efficiently with redesigned lungs and temperature controls than he could inside a pressure suit. On more bizarre planets a few light-years away the advantages of changeling bodies were greater. Unfortunately for planetary development companies, hardly anyone wanted to become a changeling. High pay lured few. So a law was passed permitting a convicted criminal to earn his freedom by putting in one year as a changeling for every five years he would otherwise have had to spend in rehabilitation. "What types of changelings do you have orders for right now, doctor?" Asa asked the man assigned to his case. It would look suspicious if he asked for Jordan's Planet without some preliminary questions. "Four," answered the doctor. "Squiffs for New Arcady. Adapted for climbing the skycraper trees and with the arm structure modified into pseudo-wings or gliding. Then we need spiderinos for Von Neumann Two. If you want the nearest thing we have to Earth, there's Caesar's Moon, where we'd just have to double your tolerance for carbon monoxide and make you a bigger and better gorilla than the natives. Last, of course, there's always a need for muck men on Jordan's Planet." The doctor shrugged, as if naturally no one could be expected to choose Jordan's Planet. Asa frowned in apparent consideration of the alternatives. "What's the pay range?" he asked. "Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's." Asa raised his eyebrows. "Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?" "Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you." "Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year." He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form. Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner. Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel. Nevertheless his time was not wasted. He had as a companion, or cellmate, another convict who had elected conversion to muck man. More important, his companion had done time on Jordan's Planet before and had wanted to return. "It's the Slider eggs," explained Kershaw, the two-time loser. "The ones you see on Earth knock your eyes out, but they've already begun to die. There's nothing like a fresh one. And I'm not the first to go crazy over them. When I was reconverted and got home I had nine thousand dollars waiting for me. That'll buy a two-year-old egg that flashes maybe four times a day. So I stole a new one and got caught." Asa had held a Slider egg in his hand as he gazed into it. He could understand. The shell was clear as crystal, taut but elastic, while the albumen was just as clear around the sparkling network of organic filaments that served as a yolk. Along these interior threads played tiny flashes of lightning, part of some unexplained process of life. Electrical instruments picked up static discharges from the egg, but the phenomenon remained a mystery. Hardly anyone faced with the beauty of a Slider's egg bothered to question its workings. For a few expectant moments there would be only random, fitful gleamings, and then there would be a wild coruscation of light, dancing from one filament to the next in a frenzy of brilliance. It took about four years for a Slider egg to die. Beauty, rarity and fading value made the eggs a luxury item like nothing the world had ever seen. If Asa had found a means of keeping them alive it would have made him wealthy at the expense of the Hazeltyne monopoly. "You know what I think?" Kershaw asked. "I think those flashes are the egg calling its momma. They sparkle like a million diamonds when you scoop one out of the muck, and right away a Slider always comes swooping out of nowhere at you." "I've been meaning to ask you," Asa said. "How do you handle the Sliders?" Kershaw grinned. "First you try to catch it with a rocket. If you miss you start leaping for home. All this time you're broadcasting for help, you understand. When the Slider catches you, you leap up while it buries its jaws in the mud where you were just standing. You dig your claws in its back and hang on while it rolls around in the mud. Finally, if the 'copter comes—and if they don't shoot off your head by mistake—you live to tell the tale." II Asa Graybar kept his normal form on Jordan's Planet just long enough to learn the discomfort of double gravity. He was told he needed another physical examination and was taken right in to a doctor. His heart was pounding to keep his blood circulating on this massive world, but the doctor had apparently learned to make allowances. "Swallow this," said the doctor after making a series of tests. Asa swallowed the capsule. Two minutes later he felt himself beginning to lose consciousness. "This is it!" he thought in panic. He felt someone ease him back down onto a wheeled stretcher. Before consciousness faded completely he realized that no one got a chance to back out of becoming a changeling, that he was on his way to the conversion tank right now. When he finally awoke he felt well rested and very comfortable. But for a long time he was afraid to open his eyes. "Come on, Graybar," said a deep, booming voice. "Let's test our wings." It was not Kershaw's voice, but it had to be Kershaw. Asa opened his eyes. Everyone had seen pictures of muck men. It was different having one stand beside you. Kershaw looked much like an enormous frog except that his head was still mostly human. He was sitting on webbed feet, his lower legs bent double under huge thighs, and his trunk tilted forward so that his arms dangled to the ground. The arms were as thick around as an ordinary man's legs. The hands had become efficient scoops, with broad fingers webbed to the first joint and tipped with spade-like claws. The skin was still pinkish but had become scaly. Not a thread of hair showed anywhere on the body, not even on the head. This, Asa realized, was what he looked like himself. It would have been more bearable if the head had not retained strong traces of humanity. The nostrils flared wide and the jaws hardly emerged from the neck, but the ears were human ears and the eyes, under those horny ridges, were human eyes. Asa felt sure that the eyes could still weep. He started to walk forward and tipped over on his side. Kershaw laughed. "Come to daddy, babykins," Kershaw said, holding out his hands. "Only try hopping this time. And take it easy." Asa pushed himself upright with one arm and tried a small hop. Nerve and muscle coordination was perfect. He found himself leaping as high as Kershaw's head. "That's the way," Kershaw said approvingly. "Now get this on and we'll go outside." Asa snapped on a belt and breech cloth combination that had flaps of fabric dangling from the belt in front and behind. He followed as Kershaw pushed open a sliding door to lead the way out of the room where they had been left to revive from conversion. They went into a courtyard partly covered by a roof projecting from the Hazeltyne company's dome settlement. The far half of the courtyard was open to the gray drizzle that fell almost ceaselessly from the sky of Jordan's Planet and turned most of its surface into marsh and mud flats. A high wall enclosed the far portion of the courtyard. Ranged along the wall were thirty stalls for muck men. From fifty yards across the courtyard a muck man bounded over to them in two leaps. Attached to a harness across his shoulders and chest were a gun and a long knife. "Names?" he growled. He was a foot taller than Graybar and big everywhere in proportion. "Kershaw. I'm back, Furston." "I'm Graybar." "Kershaw again? Just start in where you left off, sucker. Come on, you." He pointed to Asa and leaped to the open portion of the courtyard. "Do what he says," Kershaw whispered to Graybar. "He's sort of a trusty and warden and parole officer rolled into one." Asa was put through a series of exercises to get him used to his distorted body, to teach him how to leap and how to dig. He was shown how to operate the radio he would carry and how to fire the pencil-slim rockets of this gun. Finally he was told to eat a few berries from a native vine. He did so and immediately vomited. Furston laughed. "That's to remind you you're still a man," Furston said, grinning. "Everything that grows on this planet is poison. So if you got any ideas of hiding out till your term is up, forget 'em. Right here is where you eat." Asa turned without a word and hopped feebly away from Furston. He lifted his head to breathe deeply and saw two humans watching him from an observation tower on the roof. He leaped twenty feet into the air for a closer look. Gazing at him with repugnance, after witnessing the end of his session with Furston, were Harriet Hazeltyne and general manager Tom Dorr. The girl's presence merely puzzled Asa, but Dorr's being here worried him. Dorr had tried to get rid of him once and was now in an excellent position to make the riddance permanent. At supper that night, squatting on the ground beside a low table with the dozen other muck men operating from the dome, Asa asked what the two were doing out here. "The girl will inherit this racket some day, won't she?" asked one of the others. "She wants to see what kind of suckers are making her rich." "Maybe that guy Dorr brought her along to show her what a big wheel he is," said one of the others. "Just hope he doesn't take over the operations." III Next morning Furston passed out guns, knives, radios, and pouches to carry any eggs the muck men found. He gave each man a compass and assigned the sectors to be worked during the day. Finally he called Graybar aside. "In case you don't like it here," Furston said, "you can get a week knocked off your sentence for every egg you bring in. Now get out there and work that muck." Furston sent Graybar and Kershaw out together so that the veteran could show Asa the ropes. Asa had already learned that the wall around the courtyard was to keep Sliders out, not muck men in. He leaped over it and hopped along after Kershaw. Feet slapping against the mud, they went about five miles from the Hazeltyne station, swimming easily across ponds too broad to jump. The mud, if not precisely as pleasant to the touch as chinchilla fur, was not at all uncomfortable, and the dripping air caressed their skins like a summer breeze back on Earth. Tiny, slippery creatures skidded and splashed out of their way. Finally Kershaw stopped. His experienced eye had seen a trail of swamp weeds crushed low into the mud. "Keep your eyes open," Kershaw said. "There's a Slider been around here lately. If you see something like an express train headed our way, start shooting." At each leap along the trail they peered quickly around. They saw no Sliders, but this meant little, for the beasts lived under the mud as much as on top of it. Kershaw halted again when they came to a roughly circular area some ten yards in diameter where the weeds had been torn out and lay rotting in the muck. "We're in luck," he said as Asa skidded to a stop at his side. "An egg was laid somewhere here within the last week. These places are hard to spot when the new weeds start growing." Kershaw took a long look around. "No trouble in sight. We dig." They started at the center of the cleared area, shoveling up great gobs of mud with their hands and flinging them out of the clearing. Usually a muck man dug in a spiral out from the center, but Graybar and Kershaw dug in gradually widening semi-circles opposite each other. They had to dig four feet deep, and it was slow going until they had a pit big enough to stand in. Each handful of mud had to be squeezed gently before it was thrown away, to make sure it didn't conceal an egg. As he worked, Asa kept thinking what an inefficient system it was. Everything about the operation was wrong. "Got it!" Kershaw shouted. He leaped out of the pit and started wiping slime off a round object the size of a baseball. Asa jumped out to watch. "A big one," Kershaw said. He held it, still smeared with traces of mud, lovingly to his cheek, and then lifted it to eye level. "Just look at it." A SLIDER EGG The egg was flashing with a mad radiance, like a thousand diamonds being splintered under a brilliant sun. Static crackled in Asa's earphones and he thought of what Kershaw had said, that the scintillation of an egg was an effect of its calls to a mother Slider for help. Asa looked around. "Jump!" he shouted. At the edge of the clearing a segmented length of greenish black scales, some two feet thick and six feet high, had reared up out of the weeds. The top segment was almost all mouth, already opened to show row upon row of teeth. Before Asa could draw his gun the Slider lowered its head to the ground, dug two front flippers into the mud and shot forward. Asa leaped with all his strength, sailing far out of the clearing. While he was still in the air he snapped the mouthpiece of his radio down from where it was hinged over his head. As he landed he turned instantly, his gun in his hand. "Calling the 'copter!" he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. "Kershaw and Graybar, sector eight, five miles out. Hurry!" "Graybar?" asked a voice in his earphone. "What's up?" "We've got an egg but a Slider wants it back." "On the way." Asa hopped back to the clearing. Kershaw must have been bowled over by the Slider's first rush, for he was trying to hop on one leg as if the other had been broken. The egg lay flickering on top of the mud where Kershaw had dropped it. The Slider, eight flippers on each side working madly, was twisting its thirty feet of wormlike body around for another charge. Aiming hastily, Asa fired a rocket at the monster's middle segment. The rocket smashed through hard scales and exploded in a fountain of gray flesh. The Slider writhed, coating its wound in mud, and twisted toward Asa. He leaped to one side, firing from the air and missing, and saw the Slider turn toward the patch of weeds where he would land. His legs were tensed to leap again the moment he hit the mud, but he saw the Slider would be on top of him before he could escape. As he landed he thrust his gun forward almost into the mouth of the creature and fired again. Even as he was knocked aside into the muck, Asa's body was showered with shreds of alien flesh scattered by the rocket's explosion. Desperately pushing himself to his feet, he saw the long headless body shiver and lie still. Asa took a deep breath and looked around. "Kershaw!" he called. "Where are you?" "Over here." Kershaw stood briefly above the weeds and fell back again. Asa leaped over to him. "Thanks," Kershaw said. "Muck men stick together. You'll make a good one. I wouldn't have had a chance. My leg's busted." "The helicopter ought to be here pretty soon," Asa said. He looked over at the dead Slider and shook his head. "Tell me, what are the odds on getting killed doing this?" "Last time I was here there was about one mucker killed for every six eggs brought out. Of course you're not supposed to stand there admiring the eggs like I did while a Slider comes up on you." Asa hopped over to the egg, which was still full of a dancing radiance where it rested on the mud. He scooped a hole in the muck and buried the egg. "Just in case there are any more Sliders around," he explained. "Makes no difference," said Kershaw, pointing upward. "Here comes the 'copter, late as usual." The big machine circled them, hovered to inspect the dead Slider, and settled down on broad skids. Through the transparent nose Asa could see Tom Dorr and Harriet Hazeltyne. The company manager swung the door open and leaned out. "I see you took care of the Slider," he said. "Hand over the egg." "Kershaw has a broken leg," Asa said. "I'll help him in and then I'll get the egg." While Kershaw grabbed the door frame to help pull himself into the helicopter, Asa got under his companion's belly and lifted him by the waist. He hadn't realized before just how strong his new body was. Kershaw, as a muck man, would have weighed close to three hundred pounds on Earth, close to six hundred here. Dorr made no move to help, but the girl reached under Kershaw's shoulder and strained to get him in. Once he was inside, Asa saw, the cabin was crowded. "Are you going to have room for me too?" he asked. "Not this trip," Dorr answered. "Now give me the egg." Asa didn't hesitate. "The egg stays with me," he said softly. "You do what I tell you, mucker," said Dorr. "Nope. I want to make sure you come back." Asa turned his head to Harriet. "You see, Miss Hazeltyne, I don't trust your friend. You might ask him to tell you about it." Dorr stared at him with narrowed eyes. Suddenly he smiled in a way that worried Asa. "Whatever you say, Graybar," Dorr said. He turned to the controls. In another minute the helicopter was in the sky. A round trip for the helicopter should have taken no more than twenty minutes, allowing time for Kershaw to be taken out at the settlement. After an hour passed Asa began to worry. He was sure Dorr would return for the egg. Finally he realized that Dorr could locate the egg approximately by the body of the dead Slider. Dorr could return for the egg any time with some other muck man to dig for it. Asa pulled down the mouthpiece of his radio. "This is Graybar, calling the helicopter," he said. "When are you coming?" There was no answer except the hum of carrier wave. If he tried to carry the egg back, Asa knew, Sliders would attack him all along the way. A man had no chance of getting five miles with an egg by himself. He could leave the egg here, of course. Even so he would be lucky if he got back, following a hazy compass course from which he and Kershaw had certainly deviated on their outward trip. There were no landmarks in this wilderness of bog to help him find his way. The workers were supposed to home in on radio signals, if they lost their bearings, but Dorr would deny him that help. What was the night like on Jordan's Planet? Maybe Sliders slept at night. If he could stay awake, and if he didn't faint from hunger in this strange new body, and if the Sliders left him alone.... A whirring noise made Asa jump in alarm. Then he smiled in relief, for it was the helicopter, the blessed helicopter, coming in over the swamp. But what if it was Dorr, coming back alone to dispose of him without any witnesses? Asa leaped for the carcass of the dead Slider and took shelter behind it. No machine-gun blast of rockets came from the helicopter. The big machine swooped low dizzily, tilted back in an inexpert attempt to hover, thumped down upon the mud and slid forward. As Asa jumped aside, the landing skids caught against the Slider's body and the helicopter flipped forward on its nose, one of the rotor blades plunging deep into the mud. Asa leaped forward in consternation. Not only was his chance of safe passage back to the settlement wrecked, but now he would have the extra burden of taking care of the pilot. When he reached the nose of the helicopter he saw that the pilot, untangling herself from the controls to get up, was Harriet Hazeltyne. IV "Are you hurt?" Asa asked her. She reached for his shoulder to steady herself as she climbed out of the machine. "I guess not," she said. "But taking a fall in this gravity is no fun. From the way my face feels I ought to be getting a black eye pretty soon." "What happened?" "I made a fool of myself." She made a face back in the direction of the settlement. "Dorr wasn't going to come after you. He said anyone who talked back to him should try arguing with the Sliders." She looked up at the machine-gun on the helicopter. "They feed at night, you know. And they eat their own kind," she said. "The Slider you killed would draw them like ants to jam." Asa glanced around quickly to make sure no Sliders had already come. He eyed the helicopter with distaste at the thought of what a flimsy fort it would make. "Anyway," Harriet said, "I told him he couldn't just leave you here and we started arguing. I lost my temper. He thought he had brought me to Jordan's Planet on a fancy tour. I told him the real reason I was here was to check up for my father on the way he was running things and there seemed to be a lot wrong. So he told me very politely I could run things to suit myself and he walked off." She shrugged, as if to indicate that she had made a mess of things. "And you took the helicopter by yourself," Asa said, as if he could hardly believe it yet. "Oh, back on Earth I can make a helicopter do stunts. But I wasn't used to this gravity. I don't suppose you could make this machine stand up straight?" Asa tugged at the body of the Slider until he got it off the skids of the plane. He pulled with all his strength at the rotor blade sunk in the mud, but the weight of the helicopter was upon it and the mud held it with a suction of its own. After a few minutes he had to give up. "We fight off the Sliders, then," she said, as matter of factly as if that problem was settled. "If it's any comfort, I know how to handle the machine-gun." "Nope. In this drizzle, at night, the Sliders would be on us before we could see them. We've got to try to get back." He stood in thought while she stared at him patiently. "What happened to the other muck men who went out today?" he asked. "They were called in when the 'copter came out the first time. Some of them may not have got back yet."
Why did Dennis' girlfriend leave him?
She wanted to take a new job
She was upset he cheated with 5 or 6 women from other planets
She couldn't compete with his love of space travel
She was upset about his visit to the chamber
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
Where is International Police headquarters located?
Mercury
Mars
Venus
Terra
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
Why was the journey not a new adventure for the captain?
He disliked flying lightning fast
He'd never spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance
He did not have his usual luxurious office onboard
He was the only one who had been to the outer planets before
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
What is the most likely reason Dennis was sympathetic toward Randall even though his failure caused a catastrophe?
He was angry at Dallas for criticizing Randall
He thought Randall had no place in the I S P
He knew Randall was a coward
He could relate Randall's behavior to his experience with Koerber
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
Where did Marla end up?
She went to work as a dancer in the Jovian Chamber.
She left Dennis and went to Earth for a new job.
She broke up with Dennis and married someone else on Venus.
Drifting in space, possibly in very small pieces.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
Other than the expense, what had been the downside for Dennis of spending a night in the Jovian Chamber?
The price was a rip-off because there were no private rooms left and they wouldn't give him a refund.
He missed a call-out to help capture a space pirate, plus a Martian mugged him and took all his money.
The hypnotics used to induce pleasure are very addictive, and he had to go into rehab.
He missed a call-out to help capture a space pirate and was disciplined by his employer, plus he lost his girlfriend.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
What phrase mostly closely captures why the Martian who attacks Dennis seems to hate him so much?
Martians, as a race, hate Terrans - all Terrans - because they view them as colonial oppressors preventing their freedom.
On Mars, hazel eyes such as Dennis' are considered a socio-economic indicator of a class Martians view as having caused all their problems.
Dennis and the Martian have had previous run-ins over women and the Martian thinks Dennis owes him money from a billiards game.
The Martian is jealous of Dennis because of the Mercurean dancer at the bar who is coming on to him.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
Why did the bar brawl end up being a net positive event for Dennis?
Because on Venus, a criminal's personal effects are given to the crime victim, so Dennis acquired an expensive tunic trimmed in ocelandian fur, and a costly acerine ring.
Because a huge money roll fell out of the Martian's pocket during the fight, and afterward, Dennis noticed it and pocketed it.
The bartender paid his tab out of gratitude for ridding them of the troublemaking Martian.
Because the Martian was a space pirate, and the police were pleased at being able to grab him, and gave Dennis the credit.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
How did the dancer respond to Dennis' victory over the Martian?
She offered Dennis free services for a week.
She gave him a come-hither look and they had a great time.
She gave him a quick salute, blew him a kiss and returned to dancing, as she needed to keep her job.
She gave him a poisonous look.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
What did the commander think about the danger level of the mission he gave to Dennis?
He thought of the mission as part of Dennis' punishment for not being ready to nab Koerber earlier.
He thought it would be an easy out and back, since Koerber was low on supplies.
He considered it just another day in the life of an I.S.P. officer.
He thought there was a pretty good chance Dennis would die during the mission.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
What was the most noteworthy feature of the spaceship provided for Dennis and his crew to chase down Koerber?
It's the first I.S.P. ship with artificial gravity.
The beryloid double-hull design.
The most important part of any ship is always the same:the crew.
It's just about the fastest ship out in space, a huge advantage.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
What did Dennis' crew do with their spare time while they were trying to find the pirate ship?
The new ship was also the first with ship-to-shore internet, so they could watch videos in their spare time.
All the hands spent their spare time doing exercises to keep their muscles strong in space.
The crew was kept busy in their spare time fixing all the systems that didn't really work right on this brand new ship.
They didn't have any spare time. They ran training exercises on procedures and weapons over and over to be ready.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
Why did George Randall's failure to follow orders result in Dennis' ship being pulled down to the planetoid?
The jets needed to be turned on and off at specific times to use the planetoid as a slingshot to catch Koerber. Since they got power at the wrong time, they were propelled to the planetoid's surface.
Since George Randall didn't follow the order to cut jets, that meant another crewman had to do it, which meant that crewman couldn't do his own job of positioning the magnetic repulsion plates.
With the jets still on, their ship could not "run silent" and avoid detection by Koerber's ship.
With the jets still on, the magnetic repulsion plates could not be activated, resulting in them being tractored in by Koerber's ship.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
How many words are there in this story?
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THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
What can we infer from the longest sentence in this story?
He used a sledge-hammer to fight the Martian.
The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury.
He outran the Martian until the latter was exhausted.
He dodged the Martian's rush and then struck him below the waist and to the chin.
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.
In this story, who has the longest dialogue (one turn)?
Koerber
Dennis
Marla
Bertram
THE SOUL EATERS By WILLIAM CONOVER Firebrand Dennis Brooke had one final chance to redeem himself by capturing Koerber whose ships were the scourge of the Void. But his luck had run its course, and now he was marooned on a rogue planet—fighting to save himself from a menace weapons could not kill. " And so, my dear ," Dennis detected a faint irony in the phrase, " I'm afraid I can offer no competition to the beauties of five planets—or is it six? With regret I bow myself out, and knowing me as you do, you'll understand the futility of trying to convince me again. Anyway, there will be no temptation, for I'm sailing on a new assignment I've accepted. I did love you.... Good-by. " Dennis Brooke had lost count of the times he'd read Marla's last letter, but every time he came to these final, poignant lines, they never failed to conjure a vision of her tawny loveliness, slender as the palms of Venus, and of the blue ecstasy of her eyes, wide with a perpetual wonder—limpid as a child's. The barbaric rhythms of the Congahua , were a background of annoyance in Dennis' mind; he frowned slightly as the maneuvers of the Mercurian dancer, who writhed among the guests of the notorious pleasure palace, began to leave no doubt as to her intentions. The girl was beautiful, in a sultry, almost incandescent sort of way, but her open promise left him cold. He wanted solitude, somewhere to coordinate his thoughts in silence and salvage something out of the wreck of his heart, not to speak of his career. But Venus, in the throes of a gigantic boom upon the discovery of radio-active fields, could offer only one solitude—the fatal one of her swamps and virgin forests. Dennis Brooke was thirty, the time when youth no longer seems unending. When the minor adventures of the heart begin to pall. If the loss of Marla left an aching void that all the women of five planets could not fill, the loss of Space, was quite as deadly. For he had been grounded. True, Koerber's escape from the I.S.P. net had not quite been his fault; but had he not been enjoying the joys of a voluptuous Jovian Chamber, in Venus' fabulous Inter-planetary Palace, he would have been ready for duty to complete the last link in the net of I.S.P. cruisers that almost surrounded the space pirate. A night in the Jovian Chamber, was to be emperor for one night. Every dream of a man's desire was marvelously induced through the skilful use of hypnotics; the rarest viands and most delectable drinks appeared as if by magic; the unearthly peace of an Olympus descended on a man's soul, and beauty ... beauty such as men dreamed of was a warm reality under the ineffable illumination of the Chamber. It cost a young fortune. But to pleasure mad, boom-ridden Venus, a fortune was a bagatelle. Only it had cost Dennis Brooke far more than a sheaf of credits—it had cost him the severe rebuff of the I.S.P., and most of his heart in Marla. Dennis sighed, he tilted his red, curly head and drank deeply of the insidious Verbena , fragrant as a mint garden, in the tall frosty glass of Martian Bacca-glas , and as he did so, his brilliant hazel eyes found themselves gazing into the unwinking, violet stare of a young Martian at the next table. There was a smouldering hatred in those eyes, and something else ... envy, perhaps, or was it jealousy? Dennis couldn't tell. But his senses became instantly alert. Danger brought a faint vibration which his superbly trained faculties could instantly denote. His steady, bronzed hand lowered the drink, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Absorbed in trying to puzzle the sudden enmity of this Martian stranger, he was unaware of the Mercurian Dancer. The latter had edged closer, whirling in prismatic flashes from the myriad semi-precious stones that studded her brief gauze skirt. And now, in a final bid for the spacer's favor she flung herself in his lap and tilted back invitingly. Some of the guests laughed, others stared in plain envy at the handsome, red-haired spacer, but from the table across, came the tinkling sound of a fragile glass being crushed in a powerful hand, and a muffled Martian curse. Without warning, the Martian was on his feet with the speed of an Hellacorium, the table went crashing to one side as he leaped with deadly intent on the sprawled figure of Dennis Brooke. A high-pitched scream brought instant silence as a Terran girl cried out. Then the Martian's hand reached out hungrily. But Dennis was not there. Leaping to one side, impervious to the fall of the dancer, he avoided the murderous rush of the Martian youth, then he wheeled swiftly and planted a sledge-hammer blow in that most vulnerable spot of all Martians, the spot just below their narrow, wasp-like waist, and as the Martian half-doubled over, he lefted him with a short jab to the chin that staggered and all but dropped him. The Martian's violet eyes were black with fury now. He staggered back and sucked in air, his face contorted with excruciating pain. But he was not through. His powerful right shot like a blast straight for Dennis' chest, striking like a piston just below the heart. Dennis took it, flat-footed, without flinching; then he let his right ride over with all the force at his command. It caught the Martian on the jaw and spun him like a top, the pale, imperious face went crimson as he slowly sagged to his knees and rolled to the impeccable mosaics of the floor. Dennis, breathing heavily, stood over him until the international police arrived, and then he had the surprise of his life. Upon search, the police found a tiny, but fatal silvery tube holstered under his left arm-pit—an atomic-disintegrator, forbidden throughout the interplanetary League. Only major criminals and space pirates still without the law were known to possess them. "Looks like your brawl has turned out to be a piece of fool's luck, Brooke!" The Police Lieutenant favored Dennis with a wry smile. "If I'm not mistaken this chap's a member of Bren Koerber's pirate crew. Who else could afford to risk his neck at the International, and have in his possession a disintegrator? Pity we have no complete records on that devil's crew! Anyway, we'll radio the I.S.P., perhaps they have details on this dandy!" He eyed admiringly the priceless Martian embroideries on the unconscious Martian's tunic, the costly border of red, ocelandian fur, and the magnificent black acerine on his finger. Dennis Brooke shrugged his shoulders, shoulders that would have put to shame the Athenian statues of another age. A faint, bitter smile curved his generous mouth. "I'm grounded, Gillian, it'd take the capture of Koerber himself to set me right with the I.S.P. again—you don't know Bertram! To him an infraction of rules is a major crime. Damn Venus!" He reached for his glass of Verbena but the table had turned over during the struggle, and the glass was a shattered mass of gleaming Bacca-glas shards. He laughed shortly as he became conscious of the venomous stare of the Mercurian Dancer, of the excited voices of the guests and the emphatic disapproval of the Venusian proprietor who was shocked at having a brawl in his ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Palace. "Better come to Headquarters with me, Dennis," the lieutenant said gently. "We'll say you captured him, and if he's Koerber's, the credit's yours. A trip to Terra's what you need, Venus for you is a hoodoo!" The stern, white haired I.S.P. Commander behind the immense Aluminil desk, frowned slightly as Dennis Brooke entered. He eyed the six foot four frame of the Captain before him with a mixture of feelings, as if uncertain how to begin. Finally, he sighed as if, having come to a decision, he were forcing himself to speak: "Sit down, Dennis. I've sent for you, despite your grounding, for two reasons. The first one you already know—your capture of one of Koerber's henchmen—has given us a line as to his present orbit of piracy, and the means of a check on his activities. But that's not really why I've brought you here." He frowned again as if what he had to say were difficult indeed. "Marla Starland, your fiancee, accepted an assignment we offered her—a delicate piece of work here on Terra that only a very beautiful, and very clever young lady could perform. And," he paused, grimacing, "somewhere between Venus and Terra, the interplanetary spacer bringing her and several other passengers, began to send distress signals. Finally, we couldn't contact the ship any more. It is three days overdue. All passengers, a cargo of radium from Venus worth untold millions, the spacer itself—seem to have vanished." Dennis Brooke's space-tanned features had gone pale. His large hazel eyes, fringed with auburn lashes, too long for a man, were bright slits that smouldered. He stood silent, his hands clenched at his sides, while something cold and sharp seemed to dig at his heart with cruel precision. "Marla!" He breathed at last. The thought of Marla in the power of Koerber sent a wave of anguish that seared through him like an atom-blast. "Commander," Dennis said, and his rich baritone voice had depths of emotion so great that they startled Commander Bertram himself—and that grizzled veteran of the I.S.P., had at one time or another known every change of torture that could possibly be wrung on a human soul. "Commander, give me one ... one chance at that spawn of unthinkable begetting! Let me try, and I promise you ..." in his torture, Dennis was unconsciously banging a knotted fist on the chaste, satiny surface of the priceless desk, "I promise you that I will either bring you Koerber, or forfeit my life!" Commander Bertram nodded his head. "I brought you here for that purpose, son. We have reached a point in our war with Koerber, where the last stakes must be played ... and the last stake is death!" He reached over and flipped up the activator on a small telecast set on his desk; instantly the viso-screen lighted up. "You'll now see a visual record of all we know about the passenger spacer that left Venus with passengers and cargo, as far as we could contact the vessel in space. This, Dennis," the Commander emphasized his words, "is your chance to redeem yourself!" He fell silent, while the viso-screen began to show a crowded space port on Venus, and a gigantic passenger spacer up-tilted in its cradle. They watched the parabola it made in its trajectory as it flashed into space and then fell into orbit there beyond the planetary attraction of Venus. On the three-dimensional viso-screen it was uncannily real. A flight that had taken many hours to accomplish, was shortened on the viso-screen to a matter of minutes. They saw the great, proud interplanetary transport speeding majestically through the starry void, and suddenly, they saw her swerve in a great arc; again she swerved as if avoiding something deadly in space, and point upwards gaining altitude. It was zig-zagging now, desperately maneuvering in an erratic course, and as if by magic, a tiny spot appeared on the transport's side. Tiny on the viso-screen, the fatal spots must have been huge in actuality. To the Commander of the I.S.P., and to Captain Brooke, it was an old story. Atom-blasts were pitting the spacer's hull with deadly Genton shells. The great transport trembled under the impact of the barrage, and suddenly, the screen went blank. Commander Bertram turned slowly to face the young I.S.P. captain, whose features were a mask devoid of all expression now, save for the pallor and the burning fire in his eyes. "And that's the sixth one in a month. Sometimes the survivors reach Terra in emergency spacers, or are picked up in space by other transports ... and sometimes son ... well, as you know, sometimes they're never seen again." "When do I leave, Commander!" Dennis Brooke's voice was like a javelin of ice. "Right now, if you wish. We have a new cruiser armored in beryloid with double hull—a new design against Genton shells, but it's the speed of the thing that you'll want to know about. It just about surpasses anything ever invented. Get the figures and data from the coordination room, son; it's serviced and fueled and the crew's aboard." He extended his hand. "You're the best spacer we have—aside from your recklessness—and on your success depends far more than the capture of an outlaw." Bertram smiled thinly. "Happy landing!" II Their nerves were ragged. Days and days of fruitless search for a phantom ship that seemed to have vanished from space, and an equally elusive pirate whose whereabouts were hidden in the depths of fathomless space. To all but Captain Brooke, this was a new adventure, their first assignment to duty in a search that went beyond the realm of the inner planets, where men spent sleepless nights in eternal vigilance against stray asteroids and outlaw crews of ruthless vandal ships. Even their cruiser was a new experience, the long, tapering fighter lacked the luxurious offices and appointments of the regular I.S.P. Patrol spacers. It placed a maximum on speed, and all available space was hoarded for fuel. The lightning fast tiger of the space-lanes, was a thing of beauty, but of grim, sleek beauty instinct with power, not the comfortable luxury that they knew. Day after day they went through their drills, donning space suits, manning battle stations; aiming deadly atom-cannon at empty space, and eternally scanning the vast empty reaches by means of the telecast. And suddenly, out of the void, as they had all but given up the search as a wild goose chase, a speck was limned in the lighted surface of the viso-screen in the control room. Instantly the I.S.P. cruiser came to life. In a burst of magnificent speed, the cruiser literally devoured the space leagues, until the spacer became a flashing streak. On the viso-screen, the speck grew larger, took on contours, growing and becoming slowly the drifting shell of what had been a transport. Presently they were within reaching distance, and Captain Brooke commanded through the teleradio from the control room: "Prepare to board!" Every member of the crew wanted to be among the boarding party, for all but George Randall, the junior member of the crew had served his apprenticeship among the inner planets, Mars, Venus and Terra. He felt nauseated at the very thought of going out there in that vast abyss of space. His young, beardless face, with the candid blue eyes went pale when the order was given. But presently, Captain Brooke named those who were to go beside himself: "You, Tom and Scotty, take one emergency plane, and Dallas!" "Yes, Captain!" Dallas Bernan, the immense third lieutenant boomed in his basso-profundo voice. "You and I'll take a second emergency!" There was a pause in the voice of the Captain from the control room, then: "Test space suits. Test oxygen helmets! Atom-blasts only, ready in five minutes!" George Randall breathed a sigh of relief. He watched them bridge the space to the drifting wreck, then saw them enter what had once been a proud interplanetary liner, now soon to be but drifting dust, and he turned away with a look of shame. Inside the liner, Captain Dennis Brooke had finished making a detailed survey. "No doubt about it," he spoke through the radio in his helmet. "Cargo missing. No survivors. No indication that the repulsion fields were out of order. And finally, those Genton shells could only have been fired by Koerber!" He tried to maintain a calm exterior, but inwardly he seethed in a cold fury more deadly than any he had ever experienced. Somehow he had expected to find at least one compartment unharmed, where life might have endured, but now, all hope was gone. Only a great resolve to deal with Koerber once and for all remained to him. Dennis tried not to think of Marla, too great an ache was involved in thinking of her and all he had lost. When he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, laconic: "Prepare to return!" Scotty Byrnes, the cruiser's nurse, who could take his motors through a major battle, or hell and high water and back again, for that matter, shifted the Venusian weed that made a perpetual bulge on his cheek and gazed curiously at Captain Brooke. They all knew the story in various versions, and with special additions. But they were spacemen, implicit in their loyalty, and with Dennis Brooke they could and did feel safe. Tom Jeffery, the tall, angular and red-faced Navigator, whose slow, easygoing movements belied the feral persistence of a tiger, and the swiftness of a striking cobra in a fight, led the small procession of men toward the emergency planes. Behind him came Dallas Bernan, third lieutenant, looming like a young asteroid in his space suit, followed by Scotty, and finally Captain Brooke himself. All left in silence, as if the tragedy that had occurred aboard the wrecked liner, had touched them intimately. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser, a surprise awaited them. It was young George Randall, whose excited face met them as soon as they had entered the airlocks and removed the space suits. "Captain Brooke ... Captain, recordings are showing on the new 'Jet Analyzers' must be the trail of some spacer. Can't be far!" He was fairly dancing in his excitement, as if the marvelous work of the new invention that detected the disturbance of atomic jets at great distance were his own achievement. Dennis Brooke smiled. His own heart was hammering, and inwardly he prayed that it were Koerber. It had to be! No interplanetary passenger spacer could possibly be out here at the intersection of angles Kp 39 degrees, 12 minutes, Fp 67 degrees of Ceres elliptic plane. None but a pirate crew with swift battle cruisers could dare! This was the dangerous asteroid belt, where even planetoids drifted in eccentric uncharted orbits. Dennis, Tom Jeffery and Scotty Byrnes raced to the control room, followed by the ponderous Dallas to whom hurry in any form was anathema. There could be no doubt now! The "Jet Analyzer" recorded powerful disturbance, atomic—could be nothing else. Instantly Captain Brooke was at the inter-communication speaker: "Crew, battle stations! Engine room, full speed!" Scotty Byrnes was already dashing to the engine room, where his beloved motors purred with an ascending hum. Aboard the I.S.P. Cruiser each member of the crew raced to his assigned task without delay. Action impended, and after days and nights of inertia, it was a blessed relief. Smiles appeared on haggard faces, and the banter of men suddenly galvanized by a powerful incentive was bandied back and forth. All but George Randall. Now that action was imminent. Something gripped his throat until he could hardly stand the tight collar of his I.S.P. uniform. A growing nausea gripped his bowels, and although he strove to keep calm, his hands trembled beyond control. In the compact, super-armored control room, Captain Brooke watched the telecast's viso-screen, with hungry eyes that were golden with anticipation. It seemed to him as if an eternity passed before at last, a black speck danced on the illuminated screen, until it finally reached the center of the viso-screen and remained there. It grew by leaps and bounds as the terrific speed of the cruiser minimized the distance long before the quarry was aware of pursuit. But at last, when the enemy cruiser showed on the viso-screen, unmistakably for what it was—a pirate craft, it showed by its sudden maneuver that it had detected the I.S.P. cruiser. For it had described a parabola in space and headed for the dangerous asteroid belt. As if navigated by a masterly hand that knew each and every orbit of the asteroids, it plunged directly into the asteroid drift, hoping to lose the I.S.P. cruiser with such a maneuver. Ordinarily, it would have succeeded, no I.S.P. patrol ship would have dared to venture into such a trap without specific orders. But to Dennis Brooke, directing the chase from the control room, even certain death was welcome, if only he could take Koerber with him. Weaving through the deadly belt for several hours, Dennis saw his quarry slow down. Instantly he seized the chance and ordered a salvo from starboard. Koerber's powerful spacer reeled, dived and came up spewing Genton-shells. The battle was on at last. From the banked atom-cannon of the I.S.P. Cruiser, a deadly curtain of atomic fire blazed at the pirate craft. A ragged rent back toward midship showed on Koerber's Cruiser which trembled as if it had been mortally wounded. Then Dennis maneuvered his cruiser into a power dive as a rain of Genton-shells swept the space lane above him, but as he came up, a lone shell struck. At such close range, super-armor was ripped, second armor penetrated and the magnificent vessel shook under the detonating impact. It was then that Dennis Brooke saw the immense dark shadow looming immediately behind Koerber's ship. He saw the pirate cruiser zoom desperately in an effort to break the gravity trap of the looming mass, but too late. It struggled like a fly caught in a spider-web to no avail. It was then that Koerber played his last card. Sensing he was doomed, he tried to draw the I.S.P. Cruiser down with him. A powerful magnetic beam lashed out to spear the I.S.P. Cruiser. With a wrenching turn that almost threw them out of control, Dennis maneuvered to avoid the beam. Again Koerber's beam lashed out, as he sank lower into the looming mass, and again Dennis anticipating the maneuver avoided it. "George Randall!" He shouted desperately into the speaker. "Cut all jets in the rocket room! Hurry, man!" He banked again and then zoomed out of the increasing gravity trap. "Randall! I've got to use the magnetic repulsion plates.... Cut all the jets!" But there was no response. Randall's screen remained blank. Then Koerber's lashing magnetic beam touched and the I.S.P. ship was caught, forced to follow the pirate ship's plunge like the weight at the end of a whiplash. Koerber's gunners sent one parting shot, an atom-blast that shook the trapped cruiser like a leaf. Beneath them, growing larger by the second, a small world rushed up to meet them. The readings in the Planetograph seemed to have gone crazy. It showed diameter 1200 miles; composition mineral and radio-active. Gravity seven-eighths of Terra. It couldn't be! Unless perhaps this unknown planetoid was the legendary core of the world that at one time was supposed to have existed between Jupiter and Mars. Only that could possibly explain the incredible gravity. And then began another type of battle. Hearing the Captain's orders to Randall, and noting that no result had been obtained, Scotty Byrnes himself cut the jets. The Magnetic Repulsion Plates went into action, too late to save them from being drawn, but at least they could prevent a crash. Far in the distance they could see Koerber's ship preceding them in a free fall, then the Planetoid was rushing up to engulf them. III The atmosphere was somewhat tenuous, but it was breathable, provided a man didn't exert himself. To the silent crew of the I.S.P. Cruiser, the strange world to which Koerber's magnetic Beam had drawn them, was anything but reassuring. Towering crags jutted raggedly against the sky, and the iridescent soil of the narrow valley that walled in the cruiser, had a poisonous, deadly look. As far as their eyes could reach, the desolate, denuded vista stretched to the horizon. "Pretty much of a mess!" Dennis Brooke's face was impassive as he turned to Scotty Byrnes. "What's your opinion? Think we can patch her up, or are we stuck here indefinitely?" Scotty eyed the damage. The atom-blast had penetrated the hull into the forward fuel chambers and the armor had blossomed out like flower petals. The crash-landing had not helped either. "Well, there's a few beryloid plates in the storage locker, Captain, but," he scratched his head ruminatively and shifted his precious cud. "But what? Speak up man!" It was Tom Jeffery, his nerves on edge, his ordinarily gentle voice like a lash. "But, you may as well know it," Scotty replied quietly. "That parting shot of Koerber's severed our main rocket feed. I had to use the emergency tank to make it down here!" For a long moment the four men looked at each other in silence. Dennis Brooke's face was still impassive but for the flaming hazel eyes. Tom tugged at the torn sleeve of his I.S.P. uniform, while Scotty gazed mournfully at the damaged ship. Dallas Bernan looked at the long, ragged line of cliffs. "I think we got Koerber, though," he said at last. "While Tom was doing a job of navigation, I had one last glimpse of him coming down fast and out of control somewhere behind those crags over there!" "To hell with Koerber!" Tom Jeffery exploded. "You mean we're stuck in this hellish rock-pile?" "Easy, Tom!" Captain Brooke's tones were like ice. On his pale, impassive face, his eyes were like flaming topaz. "Where's Randall?" "Probably hiding his head under a bunk!" Dallas laughed with scorn. His contemptuous remark voiced the feelings of the entire crew. A man who failed to be at his battle-station in time of emergency, had no place in the I.S.P. "Considering the gravity of this planetoid," Dennis Brooke said thoughtfully, "it's going to take some blast to get us off!" "Maybe we can locate a deposit of anerioum or uranium or something for our atom-busters to chew on!" Scotty said hopefully. He was an eternal optimist. "Better break out those repair plates," Dennis said to Scotty. "Tom, you get the welders ready. I've got a few entries to make in the log book, and then we'll decide on a party to explore the terrain and try to find out what happened to Koerber's ship. I must know," he said in a low voice, but with such passion that the others were startled. A figure appeared in the slanting doorway of the ship in time to hear the last words. It was George Randall, adjusting a bandaged forehead bumped during the crash landing. "Captain ... I ... I wanted ..." he paused unable to continue. "You wanted what?" Captain Brooke's voice was terse. "Perhaps you wanted to explain why you weren't at your battle station?" "Sir, I wanted to know if ... if I might help Scotty with the welding job...." That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say. But somehow the words had stuck in his throat and his face flushed deep scarlet. His candid blue eyes were suspiciously brilliant, and the white bandage with its crimson stains made an appealing, boyish figure. It softened the anger in Brooke's heart. Thinking it over calmly, Dennis realized this was the youngster's first trip into the outer orbits, and better men than he had cracked in those vast reaches of space. But there had been an instant when he'd found Randall cowering in the rocket-room, in the grip of paralyzing hysteria, when he could cheerfully have wrung his neck! "Certainly, Randall," he replied in a much more kindly tone. "We'll need all hands now." "Thank you, sir!" Randall seemed to hesitate for a moment, opened his mouth to speak further, but feeling the other's calculating gaze upon him, he whirled and re-entered the ship. "But for him we wouldn't be here!" Dallas exclaimed. "Aagh!" He shook his head in disgust until the several folds of flesh under his chin shook like gelatin. "Cowards are hell!" He spat. "Easy, Dallas, Randall's a kid, give 'im a chance." Dennis observed. "You Captain ... you're defending 'im? Why you had a greater stake in this than we, and he's spoiled it for you!" "Yep," Dennis nodded. "But I'm still keeping my senses clear. No feuds on my ship. Get it!" The last two words cut like a scimitar. Dallas nodded and lowered his eyes. Scotty shifted his cud and spat a thin stream of juice over the iridescent ground. One by one they re-entered the cruiser.