by Jerry
“Then why did you give us a choice?” said Maitland.
Percy didn’t want to tell them the truth about that. “Look,” he lied, “I just wanted to try to be fair. I’ve tried to show you that—”
“No,” said Fuller from the floor. His face was bleeding. “No, it’s three against one. Haig doesn’t want to die, Maitland’s got his honor, and I’ve got my hope. Now you gave us our choice, and that’s it.”
Percy scowled. There was a lump in his throat. This hadn’t gone at all the way he had wanted it to. Haig was all right, but Maitland and Fuller weren’t all right at all.
“To hell with your choice,” said Percy. He rose and walked toward the lever above the main lock. He was angry, so he didn’t realize how close he was coming to Fuller. Fuller lurched halfway to his feet, stumbled forward and crashed into Percy, and tore Percy’s pistol from its holster.
Percy wheeled to the floor. Fuller aimed the pistol with both hands and shot. The lever above the door snapped off at the base and clattered to the deck, and the base itself glowed red and melted over.
Fuller relaxed and let his arms fall limply against his sides. Percy was on the floor in a half-crouched position. He was looking at the gun with a horrible expression.
Fuller smirked and threw the gun to Percy. “That’s all I wanted it for,” Fuller said. “Now we don’t have to worry about you deciding anything for us, any more.”
Percy showed his teeth and stumbled to his feet. He thought, All right, you damned fools. You want to do it the hard way, we’ll do it the hard way.
Percy backed away from the prisoners. He held the gun level with their stomachs as he moved. When he felt the control room door come against his free hand, Percy stopped backing and looked at the others for several minutes. The others stared wordlessly at Percy.
“It’s for your own good,” said Percy. But he knew that was not why he was doing it. He saw the sweat begin to run down the prisoners’ faces as he stood there with the gun on them. He saw Fuller’s left eyelid twitch again and again, he saw Haig’s lips and hands tremble, he saw Maitland’s face drain of all the blood that was in it and then drain some more. And he felt a tingling that ran from the butt of his pistol down his arm to his vitals and made his pulse triphammer.
There was a drop of perspiration on Fuller’s chin. Percy decided to shoot when the drop fell. He watched the drop intently. The drop expanded and contracted as Fuller breathed heavily in and out. It became larger with each breath. Finally it became so large that Percy felt it must fall, so he concentrated all of his energy against it and it swayed and stretched and licked away from Fuller’s chin. It twinkled down and against the iron floor in a spatter of crystal, and Percy squeezed the trigger and Fuller’s shirt front leaped up and then disappeared, and what was left of Fuller fell in a jangle of chains.
Percy pointed the gun at Haig. Haig shouted, “No! don’t iv—!” Haig moved as Percy’s first shot got off, so Percy had to shoot Haig again, and then again, before the screaming stopped.
Next Percy pointed at Maitland. Maitland’s bloodless face was a striking contrast to the redness around the perimeter of Percy’s vision. Percy shot Maitland in the face, and then there was no contrast. Maitland coughed and fell back.
Percy leaned against the door to the control room. It was easier for them that way than the heat, he told himself. He ignored the ecstasy that was still aching against his bones, so he almost believed what he told himself.
Your turn now, Percy, he thought. Let’s get it over with. He opened the door and stepped into the control room. He sat down on the dirty white slipcover of the pilot’s seat. He looked for a moment at the stars. Then he turned the muzzle of the pistol to his face and for a very long time he looked down the barrel.
Slowly the sweat crept out and began to twist in little rivulets down Percy’s forehead and cheeks. His finger trembled around the trigger but did not squeeze. Finally he began to make quick, jerking squeezes with his finger. Every time he did this, his throat gave a little whining sound. He was shaking, drenched with perspiration. He put the gun down. He put his hands over his face.
It was going to be a long wait.
THE END
MEETING ON KANGSHAN
Eric Frank Russell
His rendezvous was with a man he had not seen in half a human life—and with something else!
Warhurst leaned on a tubular rail and watched the passengers boarding the ship. This was one of his favorite occupations, there being nothing more sinful available. Nice to see a change of faces once in a while. Nicer still to see an occasional female one as reminder of the fact that the human race is not an all-male society. And, anyway, he liked to speculate about who these people were and what particular talents they possessed and why they were going wherever they were going.
Up the duralumin gangway they came, the fat and the thin, the short and the tall. The majority were men in their twenties or thirties. Adventurous types willing to live in loneliness and beat an existence out of alien soil. Fodder for the faraway. Among them might be a criminal or two as well as a few misanthropes. One man, a little balding and slightly older than the rest, wore a calm, phlegmatic air. Warhurst weighed him up as some kind of scientist or maybe a doctor. The three girls following immediately behind had a brisk, professional manner and might be nurses. There was a serious shortage of doctors and nurses out there.
Van Someren joined him at the rail, draped himself over it and gazed down. He was the ship’s agent and, as the local representative of the owner, was entitled to enough respect to avoid a charge of mutiny. Chewing a splinter of wood, he watched the ascending passengers as if seeking the one escaping with the green eye of the little yellow god. After a while he removed the splinter, straightened himself and spoke.
“Take a look at Methuselah.”
Obediently Warhurst took a look. A gangling and skinny oldster was coming aboard dragging a large and badly battered case. A ship’s loader tried to lend a hand with the case. The ancient repelled him fiercely with emphatic but unbearable words. Defiantly he lugged the case upward. His face became more visible as it neared: it was complete with two eyes, a nose and a pure white Fancy Dan mustache. The eyes were rheumy but shrewd, the nose was suffering from battle fatigue but still breathing.
“Eighty if a day,” said Warhurst. “They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
“He’s all yours,” said Van Someren.
“What d’you mean, all mine?”
“You’re the deck officer. He’s a privileged passenger. Count it up on your fingers.”
“Jeepers! Is he a big stockholder or something?”
“As far as I know he isn’t worth a cent. All I can say is that I have my orders and those are to tell you that old geezer’s name is William Harlow and that he’s a privileged passenger. I am further instructed to state with suitable emphasis that you will be held personally responsible for his safe arrival and that if you fail in this duty your offal will be required for feeding to the vultures.”
“Nuts to that,” said Warhurst. “If he’s a chronic invalid he belongs to the ship’s medic.”
“Since when have invalids been toted into the wilds?”
“There has to be a first time,” Warhurst protested.
“Well, this ain’t it. He’s not a sick man as far as I know. They wouldn’t ship him if he were.”
“I should think so, too. We’ve no geriatric ward on this vessel.”
“There’s no psychiatric one either but they let you zoom around.” Van Someren smirked triumphantly, had a brief chew on his hunk of wood, then diagnosed, “I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve figured on squiring those three dames around—on company time and with full pay.”
“No harm in that, is there?”
“I wouldn’t know, never having experienced your in-flight technique. But orders are orders and you obey them or walk the plank into shark-infested seas. The owners say you’re to nursemaid this Harlow rel
ic. Think of him as your poor old father and treat him with filial care.”
“Get out of my sight, you darned woodpecker,” said Warhurst.
“All right, all right, have it your own way.” Van Someren smirked again and wandered off.
Leaving the rail, Warhurst went below, pushed through a group of passengers cluttering a narrow corridor, found his man standing firmer astride his big case. He went up lo him.
“Mr. Harlow?”
“Correct. Who told you?”
“It’s my business to know these things. I’m Steve Warhurst.”
“That’s a heck of a coincidence.”
“What is?”
“That being your name. Could easily have been anything else, Joe Snape, Theophilus Bagley or whatever. But it had to be . . . what did you say?”
“Steve Warhurst. I’m the deck officer.”
“That so? What do you do for a crust?”
“I look after the welfare of the passengers,” explained Warhurst, patiently.
“Man, you’ve got it made,” said Harlow.
“I do plenty of other things,” Warhurst persisted, not liking the insinuation. “Taking care of the human load is only one of my jobs.”
“I should think so, too. You’re wearing enough gold to be worth mining.” Harlow let his watery, yellow-tinged eyes examine the passengers within visual range. “Real bunch of sissies. In my young days they needed no fancy-pants deck officers. A man climbed aboard and strapped himself down good and tight. If a strap busted he got an eye knocked out.”
“Things have changed,” Warhurst reminded.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Nobody has to be mummy-wrapped or encapsulated. We’ve got null-G. You’ll float like a feather as we rise. When the siren yowls we’ll both go up without the aid of nets.”
“Human race is getting soft,” opined Mr. Harlow.
“I’d like to see your transk voucher,” Warhurst prompted.
“What for?”
“It records your cabin number. I’ll take you to it.”
“Listen,” ordered Harlow, baring a set of beaten-up teeth, “I know my cabin number and I’m capable of reaching it under my own steam.”
“I wasn’t suggesting wheeling you there. I merely want to show you where k is.”
“Show me?” Harlow registered incredulity. “Let me tell you I’ve found my way through places that’d give you the holy horrors. I don’t need any snub-nosed kid to tell me which way to go.”
“No offense,” soothed Warhurst. “How about me helping you with your case?”
“Sooot!” bawled Harlow.
First Officer Winterton, who happened to be passing, stopped and asked, “Is something wrong?”
“This gilded cutie,” informed Harlow, nodding at Warhurst, “thinks I’m a cripple.”
“I offered to help with his case,” explained Warhurst.
“There you are—what did I tell you?” said Harlow.
“It was quite proper of him,” Winterton assured Harlow. “Mr. Warhurst is the ship’s host so far as the passengers are concerned.”
“Then why doesn’t he pick on the others? Some of ’em are making ready to faint.”
“Why didn’t you?” Winterton asked Warhurst, secretly beginning to regret his intervention.
“The agent said he was a P.P.”
Harlow let go his grip on his case, grabbed Warhurst’s tie, pulled its knot to quarter size and growled, “if you want to call me names call ’em proper, as main to man.”
“A P.P. is a privileged passenger,” said Warhurst, fighting for breath.
“Privileged?” He let go the tie, irritated and baffled. “Never asked for a privilege in my life and I’m not starting now.”
“You don’t have to ask. The status is thrust upon you.”
“Why?”
“How the devil should I know why?” retorted Warhurst, feeling far from jovial himself. He freed his neck and pumped oxygen. “I get orders and I don’t question the reasons for them.”
“There aren’t any reasons,” Harlow informed. “Some jerk of a clerk must have got things mixed up. Is there a big shot named Barlow on board?”
“No.”
“Can’t be him then, can it? Not if he isn’t here. Anyway, nobody’s going to coddle me, see? Prize fool I’d look being baby-sitted by some young squirt dolled up like a Christmas tree.”
“The young squirt,” Winterton pointed out, “happens to be forty-two years old and has twenty years of space service behind him.”
“Just as I thought,” said Harlow. “Still wet behind the ears and got plenty to learn. I could eat six like him before breakfast and still be all set for a real feed.” He gripped his case and heaved it off the floor, his fingers thin and veined, with knuckles like knobs. “You decorated dummies go and prop up the staggerers. I can fend for myself,” he grunted.
Case in hand, he went along the corridor and peered at the number on each cabin door. His pace was slow, laborious. Turning the end comer, he passed from sight.
“Awkward customer, huh?” said Warhurst.
“A savage old-timer,” decided Winterton. “Aren’t many of them left these days. Wonder why he’s been rated a P.P. The last one I came across was a retired employee. Been fifty years with the company. They gave him free passage to Earth along with the full treatment.”
“We’re not heading for home,” said Warhurst.
“Yeah, I know. We’re making for six underpopulated underdeveloped planets reserved exclusively for the young and healthy. The powers-that-be seem to have made an exception for this Harlow character. I can’t imagine why.”
“Maybe he’s not fit to live with so they’re isolating him in the never-never.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad.”
“I know,” said Warhurst. “I was only kidding.”
They were four days out before Warhurst renewed the encounter. He’d been kept busy awhile on various matters that always crowded up immediately after departure or shortly before arrival. The interim period was the time when he could pay more attention to social duties.
In dress uniform, with face closely shaved and pants pressed, he went to the lounge all set to play the part of guide, companion and father confessor to any lonely hearts who might be moping around. It was a job that had endless possibilities none of which ever came to anything. As he expressed it in his more complaining moments, whenever the basket of fruit was being handed around he invariably got the lemon.
And again it was so. The feminine portion of the ship’s load obviously was neither solitary nor bored. There was a clinking of glasses and a steady babble of conversation and no sweet face was visibly yearning for his company. Only old Harlow sat by himself, hunched in a corner behind a small and empty table.
With a shrug of resignation Warhurst crossed the lounge, said, “Mind if I sit here?”
“I can suffer it. Had plenty of worse things happen to me.”
“You seem to have survived,” said Warhurst, offering a wary smile.
“What comes of pulling my head in every time the chopper fell.” Harlow inspected him with faint disapproval. “Done yourself up for Sunday, huh? How come you’re picking on me? Those girls refuse to be fascinated?”
“The ladies are being entertained, as you can see.”
“Good thing, too. Keep ’em out of mischief.” He glowered across the room and muttered something under his breath. Then he informed, “Soon as I came in one of ’em put on a sloppy smile and said, ‘Hello, Pop!’ Must think I’m a penny balloon or something. Pop! Put her in her place, I did. Told her my name is Bill and not to forget it.”
“Mind if I call you Bill?”
“Call me any durned thing you like so long as it ain’t Pop.”
“Same with me. I don’t care what I’m called so long as it isn’t a gilded cutie or a snub-nosed kid.”
“Oh, well, fair’s fair, I guess.”
“You can call me Steve.”
&n
bsp; “Knew a fellow of that name once. Went into Reedstar and never came out. Tough luck—but that’s the way it is.”
“The way what is?”
“Life,” said Harlow. “They come and they go and some never come back.”
Warhurst changed the subject “Care to have a drink with me?”
“Depends. Wouldn’t give belly room to all this cocktail muck. Strictly for women that stuff is. Hammerhead juice is the only thing fit to drink and they don’t know what it is these days. Human race is going down the drain.”
“Leave it to me.” Warhurst got up and went to the bar. “Joe, the old fellow I’m with likes a blowtorch pointed down his gullet. Says there’s nothing like hammerhead juice. What have you got that he might consider a few cuts above goat’s milk?”
With narrowed eyes Joe gazed across the lounge and studied Harlow. He seemed to be struggling with a problem. Finally he bent under the counter and came up with a bottle and poured a measure of green, oily liquid.
“This should be diluted with gin. He’s getting it raw. Comes as near as it can get to being unfit for human consumption. Same for you?”
“No, sir. Got to think of the fire hazard. I’ll have a shot of crew-rum, official issue.”
Joe served that too, leaned over the bar and whispered, “Know who that old dodderer is?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
“Then we’re back where we started.”
“Listen,” urged Joe, “and I’ll tell you something. I’ve been at this job as long as you’ve been at yours. I’ve never seen hammerhead juice and nobody’s ever asked for it and I haven’t got any.”
“It’s just his figure of speech,” suggested Warhurst. “He means some kind of rotgut.”
“Listen,” ordered Joe for the second time. “I’ve never seen the stuff but I have heard of it. My father used to mention it when he conned me into growing up and following him into the space service. According to him only one bunch ever asked for it and had the intestinal fortitude to beat it into submission.” He paused to give a well-calculated touch of drama, finished, “The Legion of Planetary Scouts.”