The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Who in blazes is Orby? Brown

  May twenty-third. Noon.

  Dear Chief:

  Human interest is what you want? How’s this? They’re having a sit-down strike at Mine Number Eighteen! Remember the sit-down strikes, Chief? It goes way back to the early twentieth century, when Capital and Labor couldn’t agree on whether the common man was entitled to a living or not.

  How the Mercurians hit on that, I don’t know. Maybe they read Earth history. Anyhow, there they sit and sit, demanding—But guess what they’re demanding? More heat! They claim they are working under conditions of bitter cold. It’s only twice as hot as a sizzling summer day in New York. They want the company to install heaters down below to get the temperature up to a comfortable 120, which is normal to these fire-eaters.

  You see, Chief, the interior of this planet, since it was so small, has cooled completely through the ages. Underground, there isn’t much heat beyond what seeps down by conduction from the superheated surface. Down about a mile in the mines, it has lessened to a frosty 95 degrees, which makes the poor Mercurians’ fingertips blue.

  So there they sit, freezing, waiting for action by their union. I was down there for an hour. Took some pix of them. They want more heat, and here I was perspiring like a human heatwave. Good thing the sealed-suit I wore was sponge-lined. And the solidified carbon-dioxide packing helped a bit to keep my personal surroundings down below boiling. But I suffered for Multiplaneteer and you, Chief, to get the news. I’m that kind. Details and pix will follow.

  Dr. Ronson Halbert seems to be employed in an experimental mine hereabout. I’ll have to look it up, might be an item.

  You ask about Orby. Orby is Orby Tillson, one of the members of our tour-party. We met on the liner coming here and found out we were practically neighbors. Orby is from Los Angeles. Out in space, when you travel millions of miles, it feels like that.

  Got back to the hotel from the mines as fagged as though I’d lived in Death Valley for a month. But a shot of their super-vodka and a little poetizing did me an asteroid of good. How do you like this couplet? It’s one of my best, I think.

  Through the star-spangled void we flew,

  Together in eternity, we two.

  Walking down the hall here, I keep hitting the ceiling at every step. Drat this light gravity! They have the ceilings padded, of course, in an Earthian hotel. Food is beastly. Most of it is sun-baked, or sun-fried, to a delicate bricklike quality. When I gnaw on it, I feel like a jellyfish nibbling toast. So you have to soak it in some soup they serve that smells stronger than day-old news. Hope you are the same. Rick

  MAY TWENTY-THIRD, Midnight.

  Dear Rick:

  Stop your infernal grumbling—at five cents a word. It’s costing Multiplaneteer fifteen dollars a day, plus extras, to keep you at the best hotel, and you complain.

  The sit-down item is a little better. But you took some awful pix. On your toes, man! Give the best that’s in you. And if you’re spending too much time gravitating around a bottle and your vile poetry, snap out of it. Sending me that rheumy couplet, of all things, and at five cents a word!

  I’m warning you. When I picked you up, Wyrick, you were rhyming and rumming. You’ll find yourself doing that again—at your own expense—if you don’t produce. Items, man, news! Extraterra Correspondent Touring the Planets, one by one. Doesn’t it fire your imagination? Most of the stuff you’ve sent us crab, lifeless, uninspired. Our rewrite men have had to work like robots to hypo it up. Turn on the rockets, Rick!

  And keep the expenses down. Net so many after-dinner Venusian cigars at a dollar per. I ask you who is Orby and you prate on for a paragraph—at five cents a word. You could have sent that by radio-cable, for one cent a word. If he’s some drinking companion or broken-down wandering poet, cut him out before he ruins you. Best wishes. Brown

  MAY twenty-fourth, Noon.

  Dear Chief:

  Thanks for the lecture—at five cents a word.

  Listen. Chief, you’ve got some great stuff coming to you by radio-cable. Dr. Ronson Halbert is superintendent of the experimental mine up the country. And he is installing—guess what? This’ll make your sour-puss curdle for sure. Atomic-power drills and machinery! The very thing he was exiled from Earth for, ten years ago!

  But the Mercurians are apparently willing to let him try it out. I knew I had to get to that mine and see what was going on. But what trouble it was, Chief, you’ll never know. They sneered, so help me, when I said I represented Multiplaneteer. I hinted price, and I was ignored. I threatened subtly. Multiplaneteer, the System’s foremost news agency, most powerful molder of interplanetary opinion, could easily get them in all kinds of Dutch. And they grinned. I was stumped, Chief.

  So how did I get to that mine? Orby pulled strings. Orby is connected with Hollywood’s Behemoth Studios and threatened to stop every animated cartoon coming to Mercury’s theaters. That did it, pronto. Is it a sad fact that what appeals to the senses, rather than to the intellect, rules civilization?

  At any rate, there we were at the experimental mine. Dr. Ronson Halbert graciously conducted us around. I like that man. He didn’t reveal much, naturally. But there’s some whopping big machinery down there that looks as if it can drill to Mars and back. When the setup is completed, Halbert says it will increase the production rate at least ten times. Seems to be confident it’ll work this time.

  I don’t have to tell you what the success of this would mean. At last atomic power could be controlled for heavy-duty work. Play it up big, because it’ll be a big—pardon me—collossal achievement. Better than steam-power, electricity, rocket turbines.

  Dig up all the data you can about atomic power and hypo it into my report. How a handful of sand could run a rocket ship to Hermes and back. You could drag asteroids around with it. Enough energy in a mass the size of our Moon to squash our entire Universe into a hat, says Halbert.

  And it’s cheap! The overhead of the System, in all industries, will drop so low that you couldn’t fish it up with a mile-long comptometer. The cost of installing this unit here, Halbert admitted, is five billion dollars. But it will pay for itself in a year of operation. Five billion! The Mercurians sure have gone the limit with him. And he was exiled by Earth. . . .

  It’ll be a stupendous thing, Chief—if it succeeds. Even if it doesn’t, it’ll be stupendous, if you know what I mean. The date set for the first tryout is three days from now. What luck I’m here. Or maybe what luck you’re where you are!

  But as I say, Dr. Halbert is confident. He has it controlled this time, he says. I certainly hope he’s right.

  Well. Chief, does this item meet with your approval? Don’t be so vindictive in your pep-talks. After all, I’m a sensitive soul, a poet by nature, and you hurt me with your rude blasts—at five cents a word. I’m doing everything I can. and in all due modesty, when Wyrick dishes it up, it’s dished! Why didn’t you send Anderson on this tour? Because you know darned well I can write rings around him and find the stuff to write.

  As for my occasional nips for medicinal purposes, you don’t want an invalid on the job, do you? Poetry, lastly, is my relaxation. Ah, ’tis the gift of the Infinite to striving man! Without it, I would be a barren shell. Orby says my poetry isn’t bad. All this is just to bolster up my ego, after you tore it down—at five cents a word. Love and kisses. Rick

  MAY twenty-fourth, Midnight.

  Dear Rick:

  I don’t know if that atomic power item is any good at all. Halbert is an exile, a discredited scientist all over Earth and the System. Don’t know why the Mercurians are so dumb as to back him. He’s been a down-at-hell wanderer and self-styled prophet about the future of atomic power most of his exile. Five billion dollars worth of junk—that’s what you’ve described in your report. It won’t give a squeak, or it’ll blow up half of Mercury, including you. I certainly would miss Mercury.

  Must you dig up off-trail stuff like that? I want human interest, life, romance! We’ll use p
art of it, however, playing it up from the angle of Earth’s superiority. How her second-rate scientists go to other planets and loom there as geniuses. But please give me some reason to think I’m not an unmitigated fool for sending you on this assignment. Please!

  And, blast you, Rick, stop mocking me, five cents or no five cents. You, sensitive? You’re so thick-skinned, you have to be insulted to get your attention for five minutes. Aside from drink and poetry you used to be a pretty good newsman, so I have to keep you in line this way, even at five cents a word. This Orby is probably a bad influence for you. Hollywood, eh? I can sense from here that he’s a dissolute. Ain’t human if he likes your poetry.

  Now what do you say, Rick? Won’t you really get going like a good little boy? Brown

  May twenty-fifth, Noon.

  Dear Chief:

  Your eloquence moves me. On the way to the Dark-side Observatory, I wept like a woman. But they were tears of cold, Chief. It’s really a dangerous trip. One slight rip in your sealed-suit and you freeze to death in one minute. I: doesn’t take more than three hours t: get there. But in that time the monstrous cold seeps past your warming-coils. Surface temperature, minus 111 for the past billion-odd years on thus eternal night-side of Mercury.

  Farther out, past the Twilight Territory. where the Hot Winds can’t penetrate, it drops in close to the Absolute Zero, No cue has ever gone out more than a hundred miles on foot.

  I arrived at the Observatory feeling the an animated ice-cube. But it’s worth the experience. They have it heated, of course by an underground pipe-line that impetus hot air from the day-side. Clever, these Mercurians, though I think Earth engineers made the plans. Anyway, there it is, a huge three-hundred-inch reflector telescope.

  Excellent visual conditions, and uninterrupted. Here’s where Jimson spotted the tenth planet, Hermes, eighty years ago, before space ships could go out that far. The Mercurian staff astronomers take endless photographs. They can’t trust their eyesight. It’s naturally weak because of the strong sunlight they were born in. One of their achievements has been to record a dozen comets near Saturn. Those comet tails were so tenuous that they couldn’t be seen from Saturn itself!

  It’s not as dark out here, though, as you would expect. From here, at this opposition, Venus has a disc that’s almost as bright as the full Moon on Earth. There’s a stock story they tell about O’Rourke, the first Earthman to trek into the night-side, more than a century ago. He saw Venus. On his return to Earth, he swore that Mercury had a moon. He was just a guy who happened to be an explorer and not much of an astronomer, so he didn’t know any better. It really fools you, though.

  In fact it fooled, or inspired, a young couple in our party to the point of amorous cooings off in a dark corner, cold or no cold. Accidentally coming upon them—accidentally. I say—they were rattled enough to admit they were honeymooners, as though I didn’t know. But the payoff, Chief, is that the girl is Boston socialite Fanchon Ridgeward! And her mysterious elopement partner is or was her family’s private rocket ship chauffeur—Andy Jones! Front-page scoop for you. Chief, no extra charge.

  That pseudo-moon inspired me, too. I wrote some snappy lines as an ode to the stars. “Yon diamonds in the hair of Night—” But why go on? I can hear your snort all the way here in advance. But as I said, Orby considers me a first-rank poet in the making.

  They serve some hot soup before our party went back. For once I positively enjoyed the concoction. Talk about atomic power, Chief. This soup has aromic power whose slightest whiff would send a crawling cheese to Mars in shame. But I’m beginning to like the brew, God forbid.

  Speaking of atomic power, there was one other thing Halbert mentioned when I saw him yesterday. He could heat night-side territory with the by-product energy from his process. Hope you’re collecting all the data you can get on the science angle. The story will break in two days.

  Listen Chief, don’t criticize my friends the way you’re running down Orby. And watch out. Orby says I’m just the type for the movies, the strong, silent hero. So maybe with a little pull, which has already been offered, I can get onto Behemoth Studios on or return Multiplaneteer will be deprived of its most brilliant star. Put that in your rockets and fire it. But you know I wouldn’t let you down, Chief. All my love. Rick

  MAY twenty-fifth. Midnight.

  Dear Rick:

  Can’t you hear me groaning? That last mess of wordage by radio-cable, about Darkside Observatory was absolutely rank. I know it’s one of two things. Either you were in what quaintly call a poetic mood, or you were plain sotted to the gills. Anderson will be getting some rare brain disease, hypoing rewrite so we can use some of it. But I’ll have to give you another chance, I suppose, out of sheer pity.

  And your debutante scoop—The news broke two hours before your report came in, making it prehistoric. Now why in Pluto’s pants didn’t you get it sooner? If an elephant stepped on you, you’d report a week later that the circus was in town. You’re fired, Rick.

  On second thought, you’re hired again since your hotel bill is paid in advance. But at least I had the-satisfaction for a moment.

  So you’re getting in with Behemoth, through that no-good Orby? All right, sign a contract and I’ll radio your fare. I’m so blistering mad right now that I’d pay your fare to Hades. You and that soup. . . .

  And lay off Halbert. That’s an order! Brown

  MAY twenty-sixth, Noon.

  Dear Chief:

  I had to try some of the local big-game hunting, which is famous throughout the System. Let me tell you, it’s big game. And I mean massive!

  They take you by mono-rail about a hundred miles along the Twilight Territory, where there’s something that’s supposed to be a forest. The trees are pulpy things in the small gravity and grow high enough to scrape Venus. When the Cold Winds blow, they bend in that direction and wrap their leaves and branches around themselves like ragged beggars. When the Hot Winds blow, they bend toward that direction, open up, and glow like wildfire. You can almost see it. During a long Hot Wind they’ll add a foot an hour.

  Naturally the cycle of life is short and merry. New shoots spring up everywhere. Old, tall trees, blown over by the winds, are crashing down every minute. You have to keep your eyes peeled, or you’ll end up buried alive. The pulpy, light stuff can’t do worse than swat you like a wet rag when it lands. But it can bury you in a ton of sticky messiness in which your friends can never find you. Every now and then a body is found when the winds have swept up. It’s always preserved in jelled sap, like those bugs in amber on Earth.

  But this was all incidental. We wanted animal life. We did see some small fry, miniature nightmares on assorted legs, but no big ones. They’re kind of rare since Earth’s sportsmen, with their expert aim, took to hunting them. Eventually they’ll be as extinct as the Earthly rhinoceros.

  But Wyrick’s luck held. Pretty soon a young mountain moves up ahead. It is the Risgrawk—try to pronounce it—fifty feet high and twice as ugly looking. When it spies us, or detects us with its long antennae, it begins growling. The guide steps us three hundred yards away Good thing because that critter suddenly lets loose with all it has. From a shiny, moist knob on its head it shoots—you can’t guess, Chief—electricity! Long status of it, estimated at 100,000 volts.

  When that thing bore down on us like a runaway express rocket, we all got paralyzed except the guide. He let go with his blunderbus and then we all remembered we still had trigger fingers. The Risgrawk proved allergic to bullets. It finally settled down like a grounded zeppelin. The guide kept us from going closer for ten minutes. We saw why.

  That knob suddenly exploded. Enough loose electricity was thrown around to electrocute an army. When that happened, it was dead. The skin is going to be mounted as a trophy in Kranto’s hunting lodge. We all get credit for it.

  The way it collects its electricity is one of Nature’s cutest scientific plagiarisms. The Risgrawk runs to the night-side, stores cold somewhere inside. Then it ru
ns to the day-side and stores heat. In between its cold-sac and warm-sac is what corresponds to a thermo-generator, manufacturing electricity out of the drop in temperature. Clever, these Risgrawks. With a cold shoulder and a hot foot they sure make the sparks fly.

  Orby, watching me kneel and shoot, says I’d be a natural for a brave-man-in-jungle picture. Suggests I’d be good in a revival of Tarzan, a noble character, a noble character of the twentieth century. Watch my rockets flare when I hit Hollywood.

  Dr. Romson Halbert was in town today, looking as excited as a collision. Don’t tell me to lay off him, Chief, because he’s going to be news. Day after tomorrow is the tryout of his atom smashers. I’ll be around till then—longer I hope. Wish me luck!

  I guess this big-game writeup will convince you that I’m triple-A newsman I really am. Don’t try to deny it. Rick

  May twenty-six, Midnight.

  Dear Chief:

  I think you’re a good poet. Brown

  MAY twenty-seventh, Noon.

  Dear Chief:

  Let’s lay down our guns. Listen to this. This morning there’s a knock on my door. Who walks in but Dr. Ronson Halbert. He said he wanted to hear the news about Earth and figured I ought to know it all, being a newspaper man.

  Well, there he sat, Chief, with the most homesick look on his pan while I talked. Every time I said “Earth,” he jumped as if I had stuck a pin in him. You can say anything you like, but exile is a horrible thing.

  I could see that man eating his heart out to go back, to breathe that wonderful, soil-tainted air. He wanted to walk in the gravitation he was born to. I knew he longed to see faces around him like his own, instead of the gargoyle varieties Nature has produced on other worlds. He is living in torture, Chief. I wouldn’t wish his fate on my worst enemy.

  Before long he was weeping like a baby, and I had to give him a couple of shots of Mercurian vodka to straighten him out. Then he talked and I had to be straightened out in a like manner. It was a funeral dirge, the bitterness of life on other worlds, among alien beings and trying environments. But most of all was the hurt of the banishment.