The Early Asimov. Volume 2

by Isaac Asimov

  'Okay!' Peter Benson yelled. 'Pass the bottle.'

  Holding the spinie's snout with one hand, Benson waved the bottle under it with the other. The spinie quivered eagerly and whined tremulously. Benson poured some of the liquid down the animal's throat. There was a gurgling swallow and an appreciative whinny. The spinie's neck stretched out for more.

  Benson sighed. 'Our best brandy, too.'

  He up-ended the bottle and withdrew it half empty. The spinie, eyes whirling in their sockets rapidly, did what seemed an attempt at a gay jig. It didn't last long, however, for Gany-medan metabolism is almost immediately affected by alcohol. His muscles locked in a drunken rigor and, with a loud hiccup, he went out on his feet.

  'Drag out the next!' yelled Benson.

  In an hour the eight spinybacks were so many cataleptic statues. Forked sticks were tied around their heads as antlers. The effect was crude and sketchy, but it would do.

  As Benson opened his mouth to ask where Olaf Johnson was, that worthy showed up in the arms of three comrades, and he was putting up as stiff a fight as any spinie. His objections, however, were highly articulate.

  'I'm not going anywhere in this costume!' he roared, gouging at the nearest eye. 'You hear me?'

  There certainly was cause for objection. Even at his best, Olaf had never been a heart-throb. But in his present condition, he resembled a hybrid between a spinie's nightmare and a Picassian conception of a patriarch.

  He wore the conventional costume of Santa. His clothes were as red as red tissue paper sewed onto his space coat could make it. The 'ermine' was as white as cotton wool, which it was. His beard, more cotton wool glued into a linen foundation, hung loosely from his ears. With that below and his oxygen nosepiece above, even the strongest were forced to avert their eyes.

  Olaf had not been shown a mirror. But, between what he could see of himself and what his instinct told him, he would have greeted a good, bright lightning bolt like a brother.

  By fits and starts, he was hauled to the sleigh. Others pitched in to help, until Olaf was nothing but a smothered squirm and muffled voice.

  'Leggo,' he mumbled. 'Leggo and come at me one by one. Come on!'

  He tried to spar a bit, to point his dare. But the multiple grips upon him left him unable to wriggle a finger.

  'Get in!' ordered Benson.

  'You go to hell!' gasped Olaf. 'I'm not getting into any patented short-cut to suicide, and you can take your bloody flying sleigh and -'

  'Listen,' interrupted Benson, 'Commander Pelham is waiting for you at the other end. He'll skin you alive if you don't show up in half an hour.'

  'Commander Pelham can take the sleigh sideways and -'

  'Then think of your job! Think of a hundred and fifty a week. Think of every other year off with pay. Think of Hilda, back on Earth, who isn't going to marry you without a job. Think of all that!'

  Johnson thought, snarled. He thought some more, got into the sleigh, strapped down his bag and turned on the gravo-repulsors. With a horrible curse, he opened the rear jet.

  The sleigh dashed forward and he caught himself from going backward, over and out of the sleigh, by two-thirds of a whisker. He held onto the sides thereafter, watching the surrounding hills as they rose and fell with each lurch of the unsteady sleigh.

  As the wind rose, the undulations grew more marked. And when Jupiter came up, its yellow light brought out every jag and crag of the rocky ground, toward every one of which, in turn, the sleigh seemed headed. And by the time the giant planet had shoved completely over the horizon, the curse of drink - which departs from the Ganymedan organism just as quickly as it descends - began removing itself from the spinies.

  The hindmost spinie came out of it first, tasted the inside of his mouth, winced and swore off drink. Having made that resolution, he took in his immediate surroundings languidly. They made no immediate impression on him. Only gradually was the fact forced upon him that his footing, whatever it was, was not the usual stable one of solid Ganymede. It swayed and shifted, which seemed very unusual.

  Yet he might have attributed this unsteadiness to his recent orgy, had he not been so careless as to drop his glance over the railing to which he was anchored. No spinie ever died of heart-failure, as far as is recorded, but, looking downward, this one almost did.

  His agonized screech of horror and despair brought the other spinies into full, if headachy, consciousness. For a while there was a confused blur of squawking conversation as the animals tried to get the pain out of their heads and the facts in. Both aims were achieved and a stampede was organized. It wasn't much of a stampede, because the spinies were anchored tightly. But, except for the fact that they got nowhere, they went through all the motions of a full gallop. And the sleigh went crazy.

  Olaf grabbed his beard a second before it let go of his ears.

  'Hey!' he shouted.

  It was something like saying 'Tut, tut' to a hurricane.,

  The sleigh kicked, bucked and did a hysterical tango. It made sudden spurts, as if inspired to dash its wooden brains out against Ganymede's crust. Meanwhile Olaf prayed, swore, wept and jiggled all the compressed air jets at once.

  Ganymede whirled and Jupiter was a wild blur. Perhaps it was the spectacle of Jupiter doing the shimmy that steadied the spinies. More likely it was the fact that they just didn't give a hang any more. Whatever it was, they halted, made lofty farewell speeches to one another, confessed their sins and waited for death…

  The sleigh steadied and Olaf resumed his breathing once more. Only to stop again as he viewed the curious spectacle of the hills and solid ground up above, and black sky and swollen Jupiter down below.

  It was at this point that he, too, made his peace with the eternal and awaited the end.

  'Ossie' is short for ostrich, and that's what native Gany-medans look like, except that their necks are shorter, their heads are larger and their feathers look as if they were about to fall out by the roots. To this, add a pair of scrawny, feathered arms with three stubby fingers apiece. They can speak English, but when you hear them, you wish they couldn't.

  There were fifty of them in the low purplewood structure that was their 'meeting hall.' On the mound of raised dirt in the front of the room - dark with the smoky dimness of burning purplewood torches fetid to boot - sat Commander Scott Pelham and five of his men..Before them strutted the frowziest Ossie of them all, inflating his huge chest with rhythmic, booming sounds.

  He stopped for a moment and pointed to a ragged hole in the ceiling.

  'Look!' he squawked. 'Chimney. We make. Sannycaws come in.'

  Pelham grunted approval. The Ossie clucked happily. He pointed to the little sacks of woven grass that hung from the walls.

  'Look! Stockies. Sannycaws put presets!'

  'Yeah,' said Pelham unenthusiastically. 'Chimney and stockings. Very nice.' He spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Sim Pierce, who sat next to him: 'Another half-hour in this dump will kill me. When is that fool coming?'

  Pierce stirred uneasily.

  'Listen,' he said, 'I've been doing some figuring. We're safe on everything but the karen leaves, and we're still four tons short on that. If we can get this fool business over with in the next hour, so we can start the next shift and work the Ossies at double, we can make it.' He leaned back. 'Yes, I think we can make it.'

  'Just about,' replied Pelham gloomily. 'That's if Johnson gets here without pulling another bloomer.'

  The Ossie was talking again, for Ossies like to talk. He said:

  'Every year Kissmess comes. Kissmess nice, evvybody friendly. Ossie like Kissmess. You like Kissmess?'

  'Yean, fine,' Pelham snarled politely. 'Peace on Ganymede, good will toward men - especially Johnson. Where the devil is that idiot, anyhow?'

  He fell into an annoyed fidget, while the Ossie jumped up and down a few times in a thoughtful sort of manner, evidently for the exercise of it. He continued the jumping, varying it with little hopping dance steps, till Pelham's fists began
making strangling gestures. Only an excited squawk from the hole in the wall dignified by the term 'window' kept Pelham from committing Ossie-slaughter.

  Ossies swarmed about and the Earthmen fought for a view.

  Against Jupiter's great yellowness was outlined a flying sleigh, complete with reindeers. It was only a tiny thing, but there was no doubt about it. Santa Claus was coming.

  There was only one thing wrong with the picture. The sleigh, 'reindeer' and all, while plunging ahead at a terrific speed, was flying upside down.

  The Ossies dissolved into squawking cacophony.

  'Sannycaws! Sannycaws! Sannycaws!'

  The scrambled out the window like so many animated dust-mops gone mad. Pelham and his men used the low door.

  The sleigh was approaching, growing larger, lurching from side to side and vibrating like an off-center flywheel. Olaf Johnson was a tiny figure holding on desperately to the side of the sleigh with both hands.

  Pelham was shouting wildly, incoherently, choking on the thin atmosphere every time he forgot to breathe through his nose. Then he stopped and stared in horror. The sleigh, almost life-size now, was dipping down. If it had been an arrow shot by William Tell, it could not have aimed between Pelham's eyes more accurately.

  'Everybody down!' he shrieked, and dropped.

  The wind of the sleigh's passage whistled keenly and brushed his face. Olaf's voice could be heard for an instant, high-pitched and indistinct. Compressed air spurted, leaving tracks of condensing water vapor.

  Pelham lay quivering, hugging Ganymede's frozen crust. Then, knees shaking like a Hawaiian hula-girl, he rose slowly. The Ossies who had scattered before the plunging vehicle had assembled again. Off in the distance, the sleigh was veering back.

  Pelham watched as it swayed and hovered, still rotating. It lurched toward the dome, curved off to one side, turned back, and gathered speed.

  Inside that sleigh, Olaf worked like a demon. Straddling his legs wide, he shifted his weight desperately. Sweating and cursing, trying hard not to look 'downward' at Jupiter, he urged the sleigh into wilder and wilder swings. It was wobbling through an angle of 180 degrees now, and Olaf felt his stomach raise strenuous objections.

  Holding his breath, he leaned hard with his right foot and felt the sleigh swing far over. At the extremity of that swing, he released the gravo-repulsor and, in Ganymede's weak gravity, the sleigh jerked downward. Naturally, since the vehicle was bottom-heavy due to the metal gravo-repulsor beneath, it righted itself as it fell.

  But this was little comfort to Commander Pelham, who found himself once more in the direct path of the sleigh.

  'Down!' he yelled, and dropped again.

  The sleigh whi-i-ished overhead, came up against a huge boulder with a crack, bounced twenty-five feet into the air, came down with a rush and a bang and Olaf fell over the railing and out.

  Santa Claus had arrived.

  With a deep, shuddering breath, Olaf swung his bag over his shoulders, adjusted his beard and patted one of the silently suffering spinies on the head. Death might be coming - in fact; Olaf could hardly wait - but he was going to die on his feet nobly, like a Johnson.

  Inside the shack, into which the Ossies had once more swarmed, a thump announced the arrival of Santa's bag on the roof, and a second thud the arrival of Santa himself. A ghastly face appeared through the makeshift hole in the ceiling.

  'Merry Christmas!' it croaked, and tumbled through.

  Olaf landed on his oxygen cylinders, as usual, and got them in the usual place.

  The Ossies jumped up and down like rubber balls with the itch.

  Olaf limped heavily toward the first stocking and deposited the garishly colored sphere he withdrew from his bag, one of the many that had originally been intended as a Christmas tree ornament. One by one he deposited the rest in every available stocking.

  Having completed his job, he dropped into an exhausted squat, from which position he watched subsequent proceedings with a glazed and fishy eye. The jolliness and belly-shaking good humor, traditionally characteristic of Santa Claus, were absent from this one with remarkable thoroughness.

  The Ossies made up for it by their wild ecstasy. Until Olaf had deposited the last globe, they had kept their silence and their seats. But when he had finished, the air heaved and writhed under the stresses of the discordant screeches that arose. In half a second the hand of each Ossie contained a globe.

  They chattered among themselves furiously, handling the globes carefully and hugging them close to their chests. Then they compared one with another, flocking about to gaze at particularly good ones.

  The frowziest Ossie approached Pelham and plucked at the commander's sleeve. 'Sannycaws good,' he cackled. 'Look, he leave eggs!' He stared reverently at his sphere and said: 'Pit-tier'n Ossie eggs. Must be Sannycaws eggs, huh?'

  His skinny finger punched Pelham in the stomach.

  'No!' yowled Pelham vehemently. 'Hell, no!'

  But the Ossie wasn't listening. He plunged the globe deep into the warmth of his feathers and said:

  'Pitty colors. How long take for little Sannycaws come out? And what little Sannycaws eat?' He looked up. 'We take good care. We teach little Scannycaws, make him smart and full of brain like Ossie.'

  Pierce grabbed Commander Pelham's arm.

  'Don't argue with them,' he whispered frantically. 'What do you care if they think those are Santa Claus eggs? Come on! If we work like maniacs, we can still make the quota. Let's get started.'

  'That's right,' Pelham admitted. He turned to the Ossie. Tell everyone to get going.' He spoke clearly and loudly. 'Work now. Do you understand? Hurry, hurry, hurry! Come on!'

  He motioned with his arms. But the frowzy Ossie had come to a sudden halt. He said slowly:

  'We work, but Johnson says Kissmess come evvy year.'

  'Isn't one Christmas enough for you?' Pelham rasped.

  'No!' squawked the Ossie. 'We want Sannycaws next year. Get more eggs. And next year more eggs. And next year. And next year. And next year. More eggs. More little Sannycaws eggs. If Sannycaws not come, we not work.'

  'That's a long time off,' said Pelham. 'We'll talk about it then. By that time I'll either have gone completely crazy, or you'll have forgotten all about it.'

  Pierce opened his mouth, closed it, open his mouth, closed it, opened it and finally managed to speak.

  'Commander, they want him to come every year.'

  'I know. They won't remember by next year, though.'

  'But you don't get it. A year to them is one Ganymedan revolution around Jupiter. In Earth time, that's seven days and three hours. They want Santa Claus to come every week.' 'Every week!' Pelham gulped. 'Johnson told them -' For a moment everything turned sparkling somersaults before his eyes. He choked, and automatically his eye sought Olaf.

  Olaf turned cold to the marrow of his bones and rose to his feet apprehensively, sidling toward the door. There he stopped as a sudden recollection of tradition hit him. Beard a-dangle, he croaked:

  'Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!' He made for the sleigh as if all the imps of Hades were after him. The imps weren't, but Commander Scott Pelham was.

  ***

  In January of 1941 (the month in which I attained my majority), I undertook something new - a collaboration.

  Fred Pohl, after all, was not merely an editor. He was also a budding writer. He has since come to be a giant in the field, but in those early days he was struggling along with only the sort of meager success I was having. Alone, and in collaboration with other Futurians, he turned out stories under a variety of pseudonyms. The one he used most frequently was 'James MacCreigh.'

  As it happened, he had written, under that pseudonym, a small fantasy called 'The Little Man on the Subway,' which he apparently-had hopes for but couldn't get right. He asked me if I would rewrite it, and the request flattered me. Besides, I was still trying to get into Unknown, and if I couldn't do it on my own, maybe I could do it by way of a collaborati
on. I wasn't proud - at least as far as fantasy was concerned.

  I took on the task and did it virtually at a sitting. Doing it easily didn't help, however. I submitted it to Campbell for Unknown on January 27, 1941, and he rejected it. I had to hand it back to Pohl.

  Pohl, however, with the true agent's soul, never gave up, and in 1950, long after I had utterly forgotten it, he managed to place it with a small magazine called Fantasy Book.

  The Little Man on the Subway (with James MacCreigh) [7]

  Subway stations are places where people usually get out, so when no one left the first car at Atlantic Avenue station, Conductor Cullen of the I.R.T. began to get worried. In fact, no one had left the first car from the time the run to Flatbush had begun - though dozens were getting on all the time.

  Odd! Very odd! It was the kind of proposition that made well-bred conductors remove their caps and scratch their heads. Conductor Cullen did so. It didn't help, but he repeated the process at Bergen Street, the next station, where again the first car lost not one of its population. And at Grand Army Plaza, he added to the headscratching process a few rare old Gaelic words that had passed down from father to son for hundreds of years. They ionized the surrounding atmosphere, but otherwise did not affect the situation.

  At Eastern Parkway, Cullen tried an experiment. He carefully refrained from opening the first car's doors at all. He leaned forward eagerly, twisted his head and watched - and was treated to nothing short of a miracle. The New York subway rider is neither shy, meek nor modest, and doors that do not open immediately or sooner are helped on their way by sundry kicks. But this time there was not a kick, not a shriek, not even a modified yell. Cullen's eyes popped.

  He was getting angry. At Franklin Avenue, where he again contacted the Express, he flung open the doors and swore at the crowd. Every door spouted commuters of both sexes and all ages, except that terrible first car. At those doors, three men and a very young girl got on, though Cullen could plainly see the slight bulging of the walls that the already super-crowded condition of the car had caused.