The Robert Sheckley Megapack

by Robert Sheckley

  Moriarty was muttering to himself, figuring with slide rule, pencil and paper. Allenson was drinking, but he didn’t look too happy about it.

  “Come on, you birds of evil omen,” O’Donnell said, pouring more champagne. “Figure it out later. Right now, drink.” He turned to the operator. “How’s it going?”

  Micheals’ analogy had been applied to a spaceship. The ship, operated by remote control, was filled with pure radioactives. It hovered over the leech until, rising to the bait, it had followed. Antaeus had left his mother, the Earth, and was losing his strength in the air. The operator was allowing the spaceship to run fast enough to keep out of the leech’s grasp, but close enough to keep it coming.

  The spaceship and the leech were on a collision course with the Sun.

  “Fine, sir,” the operator said. “It’s inside the orbit of Mercury now.”

  “Men,” the general said, “I swore to destroy that thing. This isn’t exactly the way I wanted to do it. I figured on a more personal way. But the important thing is the destruction. You will all witness it. Destruction is at times a sacred mission. This is such a time. Men, I feel wonderful.”

  “Turn the spaceship!” It was Moriarty who had spoken. His face was white. “Turn the damned thing!”

  He shoved his figures at them.

  They were easy to read. The growth-rate of the leech. The energy-consumption rate, estimated. Its speed in space, a constant. The energy it would receive from the Sun as it approached, an exponential curve. Its energy-absorption rate, figured in terms of growth, expressed as a hyped-up discontinuous progression.

  The result—

  “It’ll consume the Sun,” Moriarty said, very quietly.

  The control room turned into a bedlam. Six of them tried to explain it to O’Donnell at the same time. Then Moriarty tried, and finally Allenson.

  “Its rate of growth is so great and its speed so slow—and it will get so much energy—that the leech will be able to consume the Sun by the time it gets there. Or, at least, to live off it until it can consume it.”

  O’Donnell didn’t bother to understand. He turned to the operator.

  “Turn it,” he said.

  They all hovered over the radar screen, waiting.

  * * * *

  The food turned out of the leech’s path and streaked away. Ahead was a tremendous source, but still a long way off. The leech hesitated.

  Its cells, recklessly expending energy, shouted for a decision. The food slowed, tantalizingly near.

  The closer source or the greater?

  The leech’s body wanted food now.

  It started after it, away from the Sun.

  The Sun would come next.

  * * * *

  “Pull it out at right angles to the plane of the Solar System,” Allenson said.

  The operator touched the controls. On the radar screen, they saw a blob pursuing a dot. It had turned.

  Relief washed over them. It had been close!

  “In what portion of the sky would the leech be?” O’Donnell asked, his face expressionless.

  “Come outside; I believe I can show you,” an astronomer said. They walked to the door. “Somewhere in that section,” the astronomer said, pointing.

  “Fine. All right, Soldier,” O’Donnell told the operator. “Carry out your orders.”

  The scientists gasped in unison. The operator manipulated the controls and the blob began to overtake the dot. Micheals started across the room.

  “Stop,” the general said, and his strong, commanding voice stopped Micheals. “I know what I’m doing. I had that ship especially built.”

  The blob overtook the dot on the radar screen.

  “I told you this was a personal matter,” O’Donnell said. “I swore to destroy that leech. We can never have any security while it lives.” He smiled. “Shall we look at the sky?”

  The general strolled to the door, followed by the scientists.

  “Push the button, Soldier!”

  The operator did. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the sky lit up!

  A bright star hung in space. Its brilliance filled the night, grew, and started to fade.

  “What did you do?” Micheals gasped.

  “That rocket was built around a hydrogen bomb,” O’Donnell said, his strong face triumphant. “I set it off at the contact moment.” He called to the operator again. “Is there anything showing on the radar?”

  “Not a speck, sir.”

  “Men,” the general said, “I have met the enemy and he is mine. Let’s have some more champagne.”

  But Micheals found that he was suddenly ill.

  * * * *

  It had been shrinking from the expenditure of energy, when the great explosion came. No thought of containing it. The leech’s cells held for the barest fraction of a second, and then spontaneously overloaded.

  The leech was smashed, broken up, destroyed. It was split into a thousand particles, and the particles were split a million times more.

  The particles were thrown out on the wave front of the explosion, and they split further, spontaneously.

  Into spores.

  The spores closed into dry, hard, seemingly lifeless specks of dust, billions of them, scattered, drifting. Unconscious, they floated in the emptiness of space.

  Billions of them, waiting to be fed.

  ONE MAN’S POISON

  Hellman plucked the last radish out of the can with a pair of dividers. He held it up for Casker to admire, then laid it carefully on the workbench beside the razor.

  “Hell of a meal for two grown men,” Casker said, flopping down in one of the ship’s padded crash chairs.

  “If you’d like to give up your share—” Hellman started to suggest.

  Casker shook his head quickly. Hellman smiled, picked up the razor and examined its edge critically.

  “Don’t make a production out of it,” Casker said, glancing at the ship’s instruments. They were approaching a red dwarf, the only planet-bearing sun in the vicinity. “We want to be through with supper before we get much closer.”

  Hellman made a practice incision in the radish, squinting along the top of the razor. Casker bent closer, his mouth open. Hellman poised the razor delicately and cut the radish cleanly in half.

  “Will you say grace?” Hellman asked.

  Casker growled something and popped a half in his mouth. Hellman chewed more slowly. The sharp taste seemed to explode along his disused tastebuds.

  “Not much bulk value,” Hellman said.

  Casker didn’t answer. He was busily studying the red dwarf.

  * * * *

  As he swallowed the last of his radish, Hellman stifled a sigh. Their last meal had been three days ago…if two biscuits and a cup of water could be called a meal. This radish, now resting in the vast emptiness of their stomachs, was the last gram of food on board ship.

  “Two planets,” Casker said. “One’s burned to a crisp.”

  “Then we’ll land on the other.”

  Casker nodded and punched a deceleration spiral into the ship’s tape.

  Hellman found himself wondering for the hundredth time where the fault had been. Could he have made out the food requisitions wrong, when they took on supplies at Calao station? After all, he had been devoting most of his attention to the mining equipment. Or had the ground crew just forgotten to load those last precious cases?

  He drew his belt in to the fourth new notch he had punched.

  Speculation was useless. Whatever the reason, they were in a jam. Ironically enough, they had more than enough fuel to take them back to Calao. But they would be a pair of singularly emaciated corpses by the time the ship reached there.

  “We’re coming in now,” Casker said.

  And to make matters worse, this unexplored region of space had few suns and fewer planets. Perhaps there was a slight possibility of replenishing their water supply, but the odds were enormous against finding anything they could eat.

  “
Look at that place,” Casker growled.

  Hellman shook himself out of his reverie.

  The planet was like a round gray-brown porcupine. The spines of a million needle-sharp mountains glittered in the red dwarf’s feeble light. And as they spiraled lower, circling the planet, the pointed mountains seemed to stretch out to meet them.

  “It can’t be all mountains,” Hellman said.

  “It’s not.”

  Sure enough, there were oceans and lakes, out of which thrust jagged island-mountains. But no sign of level land, no hint of civilization, or even animal life.

  “At least it’s got an oxygen atmosphere,” Casker said.

  Their deceleration spiral swept them around the planet, cutting lower into the atmosphere, braking against it. And still there was nothing but mountains and lakes and oceans and more mountains.

  On the eighth run, Hellman caught sight of a solitary building on a mountain top. Casker braked recklessly, and the hull glowed red hot. On the eleventh run, they made a landing approach.

  “Stupid place to build,” Casker muttered.

  The building was doughnut-shaped, and fitted nicely over the top of the mountain. There was a wide, level lip around it, which Casker scorched as he landed the ship.

  * * * *

  From the air, the building had merely seemed big. On the ground, it was enormous. Hellman and Casker walked up to it slowly. Hellman had his burner ready, but there was no sign of life.

  “This planet must be abandoned,” Hellman said almost in a whisper.

  “Anyone in his right mind would abandon this place,” Casker said. “There’re enough good planets around, without anyone trying to live on a needle point.”

  They reached the door. Hellman tried to open it and found it locked. He looked back at the spectacular display of mountains.

  “You know,” he said, “when this planet was still in a molten state, it must have been affected by several gigantic moons that are now broken up. The strains, external and internal, wrenched it into its present spined appearance and—”

  “Come off it,” Casker said ungraciously. “You were a librarian before you decided to get rich on uranium.”

  Hellman shrugged his shoulders and burned a hole in the doorlock. They waited.

  The only sound on the mountain top was the growling of their stomachs.

  They entered.

  The tremendous wedge-shaped room was evidently a warehouse of sorts. Goods were piled to the ceiling, scattered over the floor, stacked haphazardly against the walls. There were boxes and containers of all sizes and shapes, some big enough to hold an elephant, others the size of thimbles.

  Near the door was a dusty pile of books. Immediately, Hellman bent down to examine them.

  “Must be food somewhere in here,” Casker said, his face lighting up for the first time in a week. He started to open the nearest box.

  “This is interesting,” Hellman said, discarding all the books except one.

  “Let’s eat first,” Casker said, ripping the top off the box. Inside was a brownish dust. Casker looked at it, sniffed, and made a face.

  “Very interesting indeed,” Hellman said, leafing through the book.

  Casker opened a small can, which contained a glittering green slime. He closed it and opened another. It contained a dull orange slime.

  “Hmm,” Hellman said, still reading.

  “Hellman! Will you kindly drop that book and help me find some food?”

  “Food?” Hellman repeated, looking up. “What makes you think there’s anything to eat here? For all you know, this could be a paint factory.”

  “It’s a warehouse!” Casker shouted.

  He opened a kidney-shaped can and lifted out a soft purple stick. It hardened quickly and crumpled to dust as he tried to smell it. He scooped up a handful of the dust and brought it to his mouth.

  “That might be extract of strychnine,” Hellman said casually.

  * * * *

  Casker abruptly dropped the dust and wiped his hands.

  “After all,” Hellman pointed out, “granted that this is a warehouse—a cache, if you wish—we don’t know what the late inhabitants considered good fare. Paris green salad, perhaps, with sulphuric acid as dressing.”

  “All right,” Casker said, “but we gotta eat. What’re you going to do about all this?” He gestured at the hundreds of boxes, cans and bottles.

  “The thing to do,” Hellman said briskly, “is to make a qualitative analysis on four or five samples. We could start out with a simple titration, sublimate the chief ingredient, see if it forms a precipitate, work out its molecular makeup from—”

  “Hellman, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a librarian, remember? And I’m a correspondence school pilot. We don’t know anything about titrations and sublimations.”

  “I know,” Hellman said, “but we should. It’s the right way to go about it.”

  “Sure. In the meantime, though, just until a chemist drops in, what’ll we do?”

  “This might help us,” Hellman said, holding up the book. “Do you know what it is?”

  “No,” Casker said, keeping a tight grip on his patience.

  “It’s a pocket dictionary and guide to the Helg language.”

  “Helg?”

  “The planet we’re on. The symbols match up with those on the boxes.”

  Casker raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of Helg.”

  “I don’t believe the planet has ever had any contact with Earth,” Hellman said. “This dictionary isn’t Helg-English. It’s Helg-Aloombrigian.”

  Casker remembered that Aloombrigia was the home planet of a small, adventurous reptilian race, out near the center of the Galaxy.

  “How come you can read Aloombrigian?” Casker asked.

  “Oh, being a librarian isn’t a completely useless profession,” Hellman said modestly. “In my spare time—”

  “Yeah. Now how about—”

  “Do you know,” Hellman said, “the Aloombrigians probably helped the Helgans leave their planet and find another. They sell services like that. In which case, this building very likely is a food cache!”

  “Suppose you start translating,” Casker suggested wearily, “and maybe find us something to eat.”

  They opened boxes until they found a likely-looking substance. Laboriously, Hellman translated the symbols on it.

  “Got it,” he said. “It reads:—‘USE SNIFFNERS—THE BETTER ABRASIVE.’”

  “Doesn’t sound edible,” Casker said.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  They found another, which read: VIGROOM! FILL ALL YOUR STOMACHS, AND FILL THEM RIGHT!

  “What kind of animals do you suppose these Helgans were?” Casker asked.

  Hellman shrugged his shoulders.

  The next label took almost fifteen minutes to translate. It read: ARGOSEL MAKES YOUR THUDRA ALL TIZZY. CONTAINS THIRTY ARPS OF RAMSTAT PULZ, FOR SHELL LUBRICATION.

  “There must be something here we can eat,” Casker said with a note of desperation.

  “I hope so,” Hellman replied.

  * * * *

  At the end of two hours, they were no closer. They had translated dozens of titles and sniffed so many substances that their olfactory senses had given up in disgust.

  “Let’s talk this over,” Hellman said, sitting on a box marked: VORMITISH—GOOD AS IT SOUNDS!

  “Sure,” Casker said, sprawling out on the floor. “Talk.”

  “If we could deduce what kind of creatures inhabited this planet, we’d know what kind of food they ate, and whether it’s likely to be edible for us.”

  “All we do know is that they wrote a lot of lousy advertising copy.”

  Hellman ignored that. “What kind of intelligent beings would evolve on a planet that is all mountains?”

  “Stupid ones!” Casker said.

  That was no help. But Hellman found that he couldn’t draw any inferences from the mountains. It didn’t tell him if the late Helgan
s ate silicates or proteins or iodine-base foods or anything.

  “Now look,” Hellman said, “we’ll have to work this out by pure logic—Are you listening to me?”

  “Sure,” Casker said.

  “Okay. There’s an old proverb that covers our situation perfectly: ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison.’”

  “Yeah,” Casker said. He was positive his stomach had shrunk to approximately the size of a marble.

  “We can assume, first, that their meat is our meat.”

  Casker wrenched himself away from a vision of five juicy roast beefs dancing tantalizingly before him. “What if their meat is our poison? What then?”

  “Then,” Hellman said, “we will assume that their poison is our meat.”

  “And what happens if their meat and their poison are our poison?”

  “We starve.”

  “All right,” Casker said, standing up. “Which assumption do we start with?”

  “Well, there’s no sense in asking for trouble. This is an oxygen planet, if that means anything. Let’s assume that we can eat some basic food of theirs. If we can’t we’ll start on their poisons.”

  “If we live that long,” Casker said.

  Hellman began to translate labels. They discarded such brands as ANDROGYNITES’ DELIGHT AND VERBELL—FOR LONGER, CURLIER, MORE SENSITIVE ANTENNAE, until they found a small gray box, about six inches by three by three. It was called VALKORIN’S UNIVERSAL TASTE TREAT, FOR ALL DIGESTIVE CAPACITIES.

  “This looks as good as any,” Hellman said. He opened the box.

  Casker leaned over and sniffed. “No odor.”

  * * * *

  Within the box they found a rectangular, rubbery red block. It quivered slightly, like jelly.

  “Bite into it,” Casker said.

  “Me?” Hellman asked. “Why not you?”

  “You picked it.”

  “I prefer just looking at it,” Hellman said with dignity. “I’m not too hungry.”

  “I’m not either,” Casker said.

  They sat on the floor and stared at the jellylike block. After ten minutes, Hellman yawned, leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “All right, coward,” Casker said bitterly. “I’ll try it. Just remember, though, if I’m poisoned, you’ll never get off this planet. You don’t know how to pilot.”