"I ain't admitting I made no gun," sulked Noreast, but he followed Charlo down toward the third deck while Olivine scurried up the service ladder into the forecone area. He spotted the nozzlehead right away and began inspecting it.
"Ship, how's the outside air?"
"Satisfactory, sir."
"O.K. Open the slits or whatever you do to get this nozzle into action."
There was a soft whine of servos and the entire circumference of the cone showed a crack two feet below nozzle level. The crack widened as the upper part of the cone rose, supported by a central pillar, well above the nozzle's line of fire. "How do we ignite, ship?"
"I'm sorry, sir, I do not comprehend."
"How do we set fire to the fuel-cell juice as it leaves that nozzle?" Olivine explained in an exasperated tone.
"I am not equipped . . . "
"Damn! Give me the control deck! Holbein!"
"Yes?"
"I need a welding torch up here!"
Crown's voice answered. "I know where to find one."
"O.K. Get it up here, will you?" Olivine turned from the nozzle to stare out at the dinosaur. He flinched back as he did so.
He hadn't realized the creature was so big! Its head was weaving about on the same level as his own, and with that long flexible neck the monster could easily reach over and pluck him out of his perch atop the spaceship. The dinosaur weighed, he guessed, eighty tons or more.
Why, if it put its peanut-sized mind to it, he suddenly realized, it could topple the ship completely off its pads! But for the moment, it seemed content to rub itself against one of the fins . . . and that was bad enough. Olivine could see the stiff metal bend under the pressure from the beast, then snap straight when a rub was completed.
The beast was scratching itself! And little wonder, the man observed, because hide that filthy-looking just had to itch! The animal was so caked with ooze and slime that Olivine could swear some of the brighter green splotches were vegetation, growing on its body!
"Ship, does this nozzle have to be manned, or can you direct its aim?"
"I am equipped to aim the nozzle, sir."
"O.K., after we get it started, I'll duck below, because the heat's going to be bad up here. You just consider that animal out there a fire, and aim the nozzle accordingly."
"Very well, sir."
Crown stuck his head through the hatch and handed a welding torch to Olivine. "Thanks, Crown. Now clear that ladder, because I'm going to want to get down in a hurry."
Crown nodded and ducked out of sight.
A couple of minutes passed, and the dinosaur seemed to be rubbing a little harder now. The whole ship shivered with the vibrations of the fin as it scraped itself, first on one side, then on the other.
Finally Charlo's voice sounded from a speaker. "All set down here, boss!"
"Right!" Olivine lit his torch and said, "O.K., Ship, start pumping!" For a few seconds the nozzle whooshed air, then ejected a thin line of yellow liquid under high pressure. Olivine flicked at it with the flame from his torch and jumped for the hatch. He moved with such alacrity that the only damage he sustained was a slight singeing of his hair, eyebrows and moustache.
And the flame was doing the trick, as his ears told him. The ship no longer shook under the strokes of the itchy saurian.
He hurried to the control deck, hoping to be in time to catch a glimpse of the rapidly retreating monster on the screen.
But the mountain of flesh wasn't retreating, as he saw in amazement. It had moved away from the fin, but was not trying to get out of the flame.
"Damn!" muttered Olivine in disgust. "I've heard of animals too dumb to get out of a fire, but this is ridiculous!"
"An amazing spectacle," agreed Holbein. "The creature's actions put me in mind of a man taking a shower." It was an apt comparison, Olivine decided after watching a moment. The saurian was indeed behaving as if the jet of flame were water to which it wanted to expose every portion of its body. The animal clumsily cocked up each leg in turn to allow the fire to play on the inner sides of its haunches, Then like an ungainly kangaroo, it reared on its hind legs and tail to expose its belly.
"I think you're right, Holbein," Olivine said. "The damn critter's taking a firebath."
"Don't be silly!" choked Icy Lingrad in a horrified voice. "Can't you see the poor thing's burning? Make the ship turn it off!"
Olivine grinned at this unexpected display of compassion from so unlikely a source. But there was no accounting for the oddities of a psychotic female mind, he mused.
The animal did appear to be on fire in spots—at least to the point of smoldering, but that did not seem to bother it in the least. Probably it was the outer layer of grime, not the skin of the animal, that was being burned away.
"He seems to like it," he told the girl. "Maybe he's bred with a fireproof hide."
"Nonsense!" she raged. "Things don't evolve fireproof hides unless they need them. I've had enough biology to know that! Tell the ship to turn it off before that poor stupid beast is a . . . a big third-degree burn!"
The saurian closed its eyes, with lids that looked at least a foot thick, and lowered its head into the fiery blast. Then it ran its neck up through the flame. Finally, it turned around and began trying to hoist its tail, the only part of its body that remained untouched. But that was beyond its gymnastic capacities. It couldn't get its tail much more than ten feet off the ground.
"Ship," ordered Olivine, "lower the aim of that nozzle ten degrees."
"Yes, sir."
"You cruel, heartless snake!" hissed Icy.
Olivine chuckled at her. "I'm just giving our friend what he seems to want," he said. "Do you know a better way to get on good terms with the local inhabitants?" The woman sniffed and whirled away.
The flame now angled down sharply enough to bathe the saurian's tail, and incidentally set off a grassfire where it licked the ferns. Olivine frowned, then decided the fire would not spread to any extent, the grass being too green to burn well. It was producing a lot of white, steamy smoke, but not much heat.
But as soon as the saurian seemed to have had enough, and signified the fact by moving away from the flame, Olivine ordered the jet turned off.
Charlo had returned to the control deck. "I sure hope he's going to leave us alone now," he muttered.
"I think he will," said Olivine. "Fire ought to be a better cure for his dermatitis than scratching."
That evidently was the case. The saurian stood gazing at the spaceship for perhaps two minutes, and then turned away, chomping on large mouthfuls of greenery as if it hadn't eaten in weeks. Slowly it moved across a hill and out of sight.
"O.K., we've had our fun and games with the local wildlife," said Olivine, "now let's get to work. We've got a grab to make, remember?" He looked over his group. Holbein, Crown and Charlo stood waiting his instructions, and Icy had retreated to a chair in the corner of the room where she was showing her capacity for looking sullen. "Where's Noreast?" Olivine asked.
"He was right behind me when I came back, boss," said Charlo.
"Ship, where's Noreast?"
"In the second deck lock, sir."
"In the lock? What's he doing there?"
"He is inactive, sir."
Olivine cursed. "We'd better go see what that crazy punk is up to. Come on!" He led the way down to the second deck and to the inner door of the lock. "Open up, Ship."
"Yes, sir. There will be a brief delay while I close the outer door first, according to regulations, sir."
"Skip the regulations and open up!" Olivine bellowed. The door opened, revealing the young torp Noreast flat on his stomach facing the open outer door. Beside him was a stitch-rivet embedder, or what was left of it. Noreast had stripped and jiggered the tool into a crude machine gun.
And there was a peculiar stench in the air.
"Back off, everybody!" Olivine yelled. "Put on your fume filters!"
He was feeling giddy before he got his mask on, but he had be
en closest to the door and had got a stronger whiff than the others. It wasn't an unpleasant giddiness; in fact it was pretty damn nice. But there was work to be done.
"Ship, blow out that stench and close the outer door." When that was done, he and the others removed their masks and went into the lock. "Charlo, take charge of that fool weapon. Take it back to the maintenance shop, try to find the parts the punk removed, and put it together again. Then hide it."
He bent down, grabbed Noreast by the shoulder, and flopped him over on his back. Noreast was obviously unconscious, but his face was more expressive than it had ever been during a state of wakefulness. A continual flux of emotions played across it, ranging from restful content to wild ecstasy.
"The little rat's coked to the gills!" grunted Crown.
"Yeah, but whoever heard of happy-powder that makes you feel like that?" breathed Charlo, gazing with awe at Noreast's glowing face.
There was a long pause of wonderment as they stood looking down at the young man's occasionally twitching form. Then Olivine spoke.
"Much as I hate to credit this trigger-mad creep with anything," he said, "I believe he's fingered our grab for us. Folks, we must have landed this ship squarely in the middle of a field of super-pot!"
Holbein mused, "It does seem reasonable to assume he inhaled smoke from the grassfire, and thus entered his obviously pleasant comatose condition."
"Right," said Olivine. "It isn't something normally in the atmosphere, or I would have got a dose of it while I was in the open forecone. I did get a small sniff when the inner door opened just now. If it isn't the fern grass, it's probably some smaller weed hidden in the grass."
"Well, let's be finding out!" urged Charlo, a trifle too eagerly, Olivine thought.
"Ease off!" he snapped. "We came here to make a grab, not to get ourselves coked! First, we're going to flop the punk in his sleep-tank and keep a watch over him until he wakes up and tells us what happened. Meanwhile, Miss Lingrad, since you say you know biology, you're going to put on your mask and gather plant specimens outside. Crown, you stand guard over her while she's out."
"I'll guard her, boss," Charlo volunteered.
"I said Crown," snapped Olivine. "I want you to get that stitch-riveter back in working shape. If any more dinosaurs come banging against the ship, we may need it for hull repair. Get at it, all of you."
With Holbein helping, Olivine lugged Noreast to his quarters and laid him out in his sleep-tank. He disconnected the deep-sleep needles, not wanting extraneous modifications of Noreast's drug-induced slumbers, but allowed the nutritive injectors to snuggle into their normal positions around the young man's upper arms as the tank lid closed.
"We'll take turns watching him, if he's under long enough," he said. "You take the first watch, Holbein, and yell if he starts waking."
"I will watch him like the proverbial hawk," the con man assured him.
After peeking into the maintenance shop to make sure Charlo was on the job, Olivine went to the control deck to keep an eye on what was going on outside. Crown and Icy were in view on the screen, apparently having just come out of the ship. The girl was carrying a duroplas sack for specimens and a pair of snippers. Crown was brandishing a length of iron pipe and looking around menacingly for some life form to test his weapon on.
It was, Olivine mused silently, something of a blessing that the Glumers Jo had carried no stock of firearms, with such trigger-happy characters as Noreast and Crown in the company. Not that he relished being stuck with a non-fighting ship with the Patrol on the lookout for him, but this untrustworthy crew was a far more immediate threat.
He frowned thoughtfully as something nagged at his memory. "Ship, you're sure there are no guns aboard?" he demanded.
"Yes, sir."
"But I seem to recall that a small-arms locker is part of standard equipment for a port-service vessel," he persisted.
"That is correct, sir," the ship responded.
"Then where's yours?"
"Removed several days before you came aboard, sir, for purposes of periodic shop-check and testing of the guns."
Olivine grimaced in dismay. A coincidence? Perhaps. But Icy's accusations of a put-up job, plus his own suppressed suspicions along similar lines, hammered in his mind.
Had that Patrol computer rigged this whole escape for some purpose of the Patrol's? Had he been meant to capture the Glumers Jo, carefully disarmed in preparation for his occupancy?
The whole affair smelled.
Angrily, he thrust the thought aside. There was no point in turning as paranoid as a common criminal! Guns were removed from ships for periodic checks, so it was silly to entertain dark suspicions over a purely routine matter.
"Don't you have any defensive weaponry at all?" he asked. "Something we can use if another dinosaur starts nudging us?"
"I am equipped with tangline, sir, for use in riot control. However, for tangline to be effective against a life form the size of the saurian, I must deploy it from an airborne position."
Olivine nodded slowly. "And we're going to be grounded here for at least four days," he muttered, thinking of those slowly cooling closrem bearings.
"Yes, sir."
Olivine got out of his chair and prowled about the deck, in search of some occupation. Now and then he glanced at the screen, but nothing untoward seemed to be going on outside. Icy had stuffed her sack half full of fern grass and was now searching for, and occasionally finding, other species of plants to snip. Crown had climbed the hill over which the dinosaur had departed, taken a look around, and returned.
"Give me quarters, Ship," Olivine ordered after a couple of hours had passed. "Holbein, is Noreast still sleeping?"
"Like an outrageously happy baby," Holbein replied.
"O.K."
He took another glance at the screen and saw Icy and Crown scooting hurriedly for the lock.
"What's happening outside, Ship?" he asked.
"I believe a saurian is approaching, sir."
Olivine scanned the portion of the horizon visible on the screen, and indeed a dinosaur was lumbering into view across the hill. "Hey, Starfuzz!" came Icy's voice over the intercom. "Your fellow reptile is back!"
As the giant animal plodded closer, Olivine saw that it was, as Icy said, the same one that had been there earlier. It showed the sooty markings of the flamethrower. But now it looked fatter, its belly being hugely distended either from gross overfeeding or perhaps from some internal reaction to the scorching the creature had received.
"Are both of you aboard?"
"Yeah."
"O.K., close the lock. Ship, prepare to use the flamethrower again. I'll go up to light it."
He grabbed the welding torch and scrambled once more into the forecone which the ship had already opened. He started his torch and stood by the nozzle, staring out at the blackened form of the colossal reptile. The animal had halted less than a hundred feet away facing the ship, and was making strange blowing sounds through its mouth, huffing air in and out in such volume that Olivine could feel the breeze, and caught a strong smell of latrine-odored breath.
Then it began grinding its teeth together in short raspy strokes, making a noise that set Olivine's own teeth on edge. Out of its mouth came a wisp of smoke, then a trickle of flame, and finally a roaring gush of fire!
"Close the cone, Ship!" Olivine bellowed, jumping for the hatch opening but getting another singeing before he escaped the saurian's line of fire. He dashed to the control deck, still brushing his hair for lingering sparks.
"Somebody find me some burn ointment!" he groaned, staring at the screen through watery eyes.
Icy and Crown came in, followed a moment later by Holbein who handed him a tube of Kwikeeze. They stood watching in awe as the saurian plodded slowly around the ship while bathing it from stem to stern with his flaming jet of . . .
"Stomach gas!" said Olivine as he applied the Kwikeeze to his tender neck, face and left arm.
"Without question," agreed H
olbein. "Note that the creature's belly is rapidly returning to normal size. Perhaps we see here the source of old Earth's legends of fire-breathing dragons—pictures of such creatures as this having lingered in man's store of genetic memories ever since the Jurassic."
"But how," Icy complained, "could an animal light its breath? It doesn't have any fire?"
"Not its breath, its burp," Olivine corrected. "It blew its mouth dry, and then struck a spark by grinding its teeth together. I saw the whole process."
"Oh. But what purpose . . . "
"Grooming activity, my dear girl," Holbein told her.
"Wild creatures often groom one another, such actions as picking fleas out of one another's fur. We unwittingly groomed our large friend, after which he stuffed himself with food to generate digestive gas in sufficient quantity to return the favor. Such cooperative survival acts can be carried out with only the most primitive and rudimentary reasoning powers."
"Well, he's finished and leaving," grunted Olivine, "and he's started another grassfire around the ship, so outside activities will be suspended for a while. Crown, take over the watch by Noreast's tank. The rest of us will test the specimens Icy brought in."
In a hastily rigged lab on the fourth deck, Olivine, Holbein, and Icy tested the plants, with the con man serving as a very willing guinea pig. He came out from under the plastic hood after breathing smoke from burning fern grass.
"That merely makes me wish to cough," he wheezed.
"No euphoric effects, I regret to say."
"O.K., we'll try the other specimens."
The results were consistently and disappointingly negative. "This is ridiculous," Olivine protested. "The weed has to be here!"
"Maybe it takes a combination," Icy hazarded, "or maybe it's not a weed at all but a soil bacterium."
"We'll find out," Olivine vowed. "You two keep at it while I go get some soil samples."
He went down to the lock, which was standing open. He hurried to the outer door and saw Charlo kneeling in the grass a hundred feet from the ship, using a welding torch to fire the grass and then bending forward to sniff the result. He kept silent as the man moved to a new spot and repeated the routine. Charlo was using the torch long enough, he saw, to test ground and roots as well as plant tops.
A Sense of Infinity Page 4