Untouched by Human Hands

by Robert Sheckley

  “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.”

  “Just take a little bite, then,” Hellman advised.

  Casker leaned over and stared at the block. Then he prodded it with his thumb.

  The rubbery red block giggled.

  “Did you hear that’“ Casker yelped, leaping back.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Hellman said, his hands shaking. “Go ahead.”

  Casker prodded the block again. It giggled louder, this time with a disgusting little simper.

  “Okay,” Casker said, “what do we try next?”

  “Next? What’s wrong with this?”

  “I don’t eat anything that giggles,” Casker stated firmly.

  “Now listen to me,” Hellman said. “The creatures who manufactured this might have been trying to create an esthetic sound as well as a pleasant shape and color. That giggle is probably only for the amusement of the eater.”

  “Then bite into it yourself,” Casker offered.

  Hellman glared at him, but made no move toward the rubbery block. Finally, he said, “Let’s move it out of the way.”

  They pushed the block over to a corner. It lay there giggling softly to itself.

  “Now what?” Casker said.

  Hellman looked around at the jumbled stacks of incomprehensible alien goods. He noticed a door on either side of the room.

  “Let’s have a look in the other sections,” he suggested.

  Casker shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

  Slowly they trudged to the door in the left wall. It was locked and Hellman burned it open with the ship’s burner.

  It was a wedge-shaped room, piled with incomprehensible alien goods.

  The hike back across the room seemed like miles, but they made it only slightly out of wind. Hellman blew out the lock and they looked in.

  It was a wedge-shaped room, piled with incomprehensible alien goods.

  “All the same,” Casker said sadly, and closed the door.

  “Evidently there’s a series of these rooms going completely around the building,” Hellman said. “I wonder if we should explore them.”

  Casker calculated the distance around the building, compared it with his remaining strength, and sat down heavily on a long gray object.

  “Why bother?” he asked.

  Hellman tried to collect his thoughts. Certainly he should be able to find a key of some sort, a clue that would tell them what they could eat. But where was it’

  He examined the object Casker was sitting on. It was about the size and shape of a large coffin, with a shallow depression on top. I: was made of a hard, corrugated substance.

  “What do you suppose this is?” Hellman asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  Hellman glanced at the symbol painted on the side of the object, then looked them up in his dictionary.

  “Fascinating,” he murmured, after a while.

  “Is it something to eat’“ Casker asked, with a faint glimmering of hope.

  “No. You are sitting on something called THE MOROG CUSTOM SUPER TRANSPORT FOR THE DISCRIMINATING HELGAN WHO DESIRES THE BEST IN VERTICAL TRANSPORTATION. It’s a vehicle!”

  “Oh,” Casker said dully.

  “This is important! Look at it! How does it work?”

  Casker wearily climbed off the Morog Custom Super Transport and looked it over carefully. He traced four almost invisible separations on its four corners. “Retractable wheels, probably, but I don’t see—”

  Hellman read on. “It says to give it three amphus of high-grain Integor fuel, then a van of Tonder lubrication, and not to run it over three thousand Ruls for the first fifty mungus.”

  “Let’s find something to eat,” Casker said.

  “Don’t you see how important this is?” Hellman asked. “This could solve our problem. If we could deduce the alien logic inherent in constructing this vehicle, we might know the Helgan thought pattern. This, in turn, would give us an insight into their nervous systems, which would imply their biochemical makeup.”

  Casker stood still, trying to decide whether he had enough strength left to strangle Hellman.

  “For example,” Hellman said, “what kind of vehicle would be used in a place like this? Not one with wheels, since everything is up and down. Anti-gravity? Perhaps, but what kind of anti-gravity? And why did the inhabitants devise a boxlike form instead—”

  Casker decided sadly that he didn’t have enough strength to strangle Hellman, no matter how pleasant it might be. Very quietly, he said, “Kindly stop making like a scientist. Let’s see if there isn’t something we can gulp down.”

  “All right,” Hellman said sulkily.

  Casker watched his partner wander off among the cans, bottles, and cases. He wondered vaguely where Hellman got the energy, and decided that he was just too cerebral to know when he was starving.

  “Here’s something,” Hellman called out, standing in front of a large yellow vat.

  “What does it say?” Casker asked.

  “Little bit hard to translate. But rendered freely, it reads: MORISHILLE’S VOOZY, WITH LACTO-ECTO ADDED FOR A NEW TASTE SENSATION. EVERYONE DRINKS VOOZY. GOOD BEFORE AND AFTER MEALS, NO UNPLEASANT AFTER-EFFECTS. GOOD FOR CHILDREN! THE DRINK OF THE UNIVERSE!”

  “That sounds good,” Casker admitted, thinking that Hellman might not be so stupid after all.

  “This should tell us once and for all if their meat is our meat,” Hellman said. “This Voozy seems to be the closest thing to a universal drink I’ve found yet.”

  “Maybe,” Casker said hopefully, “maybe it’s just plain water!”

  “We’ll see.” Hellman pried open the lid with the edge of the burner.

  Within the vat was a crystal-clear liquid.

  “No odor,” Casker said, bending over the vat.

  The crystal liquid lifted to meet him.

  Casker retreated so rapidly that he fell over a box. Hellman helped him to his feet, and they approached the vat again. As they came near, the liquid lifted itself three feet into the air and moved toward them.

  “What’ve you done now?” Casker asked, moving back carefully. The liquid flowed slowly over the side of the vat. It began to flow toward him.

  “Hellman!” Casker shrieked.

  Hellman was standing to one side, perspiration pouring down his face, reading his dictionary with a preoccupied frown.

  “Guess I bumbled the translation,” he said.

  “Do something!” Casker shouted. The liquid was trying to back him into a comer.

  “Nothing I can do,” Hellman said, reading on. “Ah, here’s the error. It doesn’t say ‘Everyone drinks Voozy.’ Wrong subject ‘Voozy drinks everyone.’ That tells us something! The Helgans must have soaked liquid in through their pores. Naturally, they would prefer to be drunk, instead of to drink.”

  Casker tried to dodge around the liquid, but it cut him off with a merry gurgle. Desperately he picked up a small bale and threw it at the Voozy. The Voozy caught the bale and drank it. Then it discarded that and turned back to Casker.

  Hellman tossed another box. The Voozy drank this one and a third and fourth that Casker threw in. Then, apparently exhausted, it flowed back into its vat

  Casker clapped down the lid and sat on it, trembling violently.

  “Not so good,” Hellman said. “We’ve been taking it for granted that the Helgans had eating habits like us. But, of course, it doesn’t necessarily—”

  “No, it doesn’t No, sir, it certainly doesn’t. I guess we can see that it doesn’t. Anyone can see that it doesn’t—”

  “Stop that,” Hellman ordered sternly. “We’ve no time for hysteria.”

  “Sorry.” Casker slowly moved away from the Voozy vat.

  “I guess we’ll have to assume that their meat is our poison,” Hellman said thoughtfully. “So now we’ll see if their poison is our meat.”r />
  Casker didn’t say anything. He was wondering what would have happened if the Voozy had drunk him.

  In the corner, the rubbery block was still giggling to itself.

  “Now here’s a likely looking poison,” Hellman said, half an hour later.

  Casker had recovered completely, except for an occasional twitch of the lips.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  Hellman rolled a tiny tube in the palm of his hand. “It’s called Pvastkin’s Plugger. The label reads: WARNING! HIGHLY DANGEROUS! PVASTKIN’S PLUGGER IS DESIGNED TO FILL HOLES OR CRACKS OF NOT MORE THAN TWO CUBIC VIMS. HOWEVER—THE PLUGGER IS NOT TO BE EATEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT, RAMOTOL, WHICH MAKES PVASTKIN’S SO EXCELLENT A PLUGGER RENDERS IT HIGHLY DANGEROUS WHEN TAKEN INTERNALLY.”

  “Sounds great,” Casker said. “It’ll probably blow us sky-high.”

  “Do you have any other suggestions?” Hellman asked.

  Casker thought for a moment. The food of Helg was obviously unpalatable for humans. So perhaps was their poison...but wasn’t starvation better than this sort of thing?

  After a moment’s communication with his stomach, he decided that starvation was not better.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  Hellman slipped the burner under his arm and unscrewed the top of the little bottle. He shook it.

  Nothing happened.

  “It’s got a seal,” Casker pointed out.

  Hellman punctured the seal with his fingernail and set the bottle on the floor. An evil-smelling green froth began to bubble out.

  Hellman looked dubiously at the froth. It was congealing into a glob and spreading over the floor.

  “Yeast, perhaps,” he said, gripping the burner tightly.

  “Come, come. Faint heart never filled empty stomach.”

  “I’m not holding you back,” Hellman said.

  The glob swelled to the size of a man’s head.

  “How long is that supposed to go on?” Casker asked.

  “Well,” Hellman said, “it’s advertised as a Plugger. I suppose that’s what it does—expands to plug up holes.”

  “Sure. But how much?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know how much two cubic vims are. But it can’t go on much—”

  Belatedly, they noticed that the Plugger had filled almost a quarter of the room and was showing no signs of stopping.

  “We should have believed the label!” Casker yelled to him, across the spreading glob. “It is dangerous!”

  As the plugger produced more surface, it began to accelerate in its growth. A sticky edge touched Hellman and he jumped back.

  “Watch out!”

  He couldn’t reach Casker, on the other side of the gigantic sphere of blob. Hellman tried to run around, but the Plugger had spread, cutting the room in half. It began to swell towards the walls.

  “Run for it!” Hellman yelled, and rushed to the door behind him.

  He flung it open just as the expanding glob reached him. On the other side of the room, he heard a door slam shut. Hellman didn’t wait any longer. He sprinted through and slammed the door behind him.

  He stood for a moment, panting, the burner in his hand. He hadn’t realized how weak he was. That sprint had cut his reserves of energy dangerously close to the collapsing point. At least Casker had made it, too, though.

  But he was still in trouble.

  The Plugger poured merrily through the blasted lock, into the room. Hellman tried a practice shot on it, but the Plugger was evidently impervious...as, he realized, a good plugger should be.

  It was showing no signs of fatigue.

  Hellman hurried to the far wall. The door was locked, as the others had been, so he burned out the lock and went through.

  How far could the glob expand? How much was two cubic vims? Two cubic miles, perhaps? For all he knew, the Plugger was used to repair faults in the crusts of planets.

  In the next room, Hellman stopped to catch his breath. He remembered that the building was circular. He would burn his way through the remaining doors and join Casker. They would burn their way outside and....

  Casker didn’t have a burner!

  Hellman turned white with shock. Casker had made it into the room on the right, because they had burned it open earlier. The Plugger was undoubtedly oozing into that room, through the shattered lock...and Casker couldn’t get out! The Plugger was on his left, a locked door on his right!

  Rallying his remaining strength, Hellman began to run. Boxes seemed to get in his way purposefully, tripping him, slowing him down. He blasted the next door and hurried on to the next. And the next. And the next

  The Plugger couldn’t expand completely into Casker’s room!

  Or could it?

  The wedge-shaped rooms, each a segment of a circle, seemed to stretch before him forever, a jumbled montage of locked doors, alien goods, more doors, more goods. Hellman fell over a crate, got to his feet and fell again. He had reached the limit of his strength, and passed it But Casker was his friend.

  Besides, without a pilot, he’d never get off the place.

  Hellman struggled through two more rooms on trembling legs and then collapsed in front of a third.

  “Is that you, Hellman?” he heard Casker ask, from the other side of the door.

  “You all right?” Hellman managed to gasp.

  “Haven’t much room in here,” Casker said, “but the Plugger’s stopped growing. Hellman, get me out of here!”

  Hellman lay on the floor panting. “Moment,” he said.

  “Moment, hell!” Casker shouted. “Get me out. I’ve found water!”

  “What? How?”

  “Get me out of here!”

  Hellman tried to stand up, but his legs weren’t cooperating. “What happened?” he asked.

  “When I saw that glob filling the room, I figured I’d try to start up the Custom Super Transport. Thought maybe it could knock down the door and get me out. So I pumped it full of high-grain Integor fuel.”

  “Yes?” Hellman said, still trying to get his legs under control.

  “That Custom Super Transport is an animal, Hellman! And the Integor fuel is water! Now get me out!”

  Hellman lay back with a contented sigh. If he’d had a little more time, he would have worked out the whole thing himself, by pure logic. But it was all very apparent now. The most efficient machine to go over those vertical, razor-sharp mountains would be an animal, probably with retractable suckers. It was kept in hibernation between trips; and if it drank water, the other products designed for it would be palatable, too. Of course they still didn’t know much about the late inhabitants, but undoubtedly....

  “Burn down that door!” Casker shrieked, his voice breaking.

  Hellman was pondering the irony of it all. If one man’s meat—and his poison—are your poison, then try eating something else. So simple, really.

  But there was one thing that still bothered him.

  “How did you know it was an Earth-type animal?” he asked.

  “Its breath, stupid! It inhales and exhales and smells as if it’s eaten onions!” There was a sound of cans falling and bottles shattering. “Now hurry!”

  “What’s wrong?” Hellman asked, finally getting to his feet and poising the burner.

  “The Custom Super Transport. It’s got me cornered behind a pile of cases. Hellman, it seems to think that I’m its meat!”

  THE KING’S WISHES

  After squatting behind a glassware display for almost two hours, Bob Granger felt his legs begin to cramp. He moved to ease them, and his number ten iron slipped off his lap, clattering on the floor.

  “Shh,” Janice whispered, her mashie gripped tightly.

  “I don’t think he’s going to come,” Bob said.

  “Be quiet, honey,” Janice whispered again, peering into the darkness of their store.

  There was no sign of the burglar yet. He had come every night in the past week, mysteriously removing generators, refr
igerators, and air conditioners. Mysteriously—for he tampered with no locks, jimmied no windows, left no footprints. Yet somehow, he was able to sneak in, time after time, and slink out with a good part of their stock.

  “I don’t think this was such a good idea,” Bob whispered. “After all, a man capable of carrying several hundred pounds of generator on his back—”

  “We’ll handle him,” Janice said, with the certainty that had made her a master sergeant in the WAC Motor Corps. “Besides, we have to stop him—he’s postponing our wedding day.”

  Bob nodded in the darkness. He and Janice had built and stocked the Country Department Store with their army savings. They were planning on getting married, as soon as the profits enabled them to. But when someone stole refrigerators and air conditioners—

  “I think I hear something,” Janice said, shifting her grip on the mashie.

  There was a faint noise somewhere in the store. They waited. Then they heard the sound of feet, padding over the linoleum.

  “When he gets to the middle of the floor,” Janice whispered, “switch on the lights.”

  Finally they were able to make out a blackness against the lesser blackness of the store. Bob switched on the lights, shouting, “Hold it there!”

  “Oh, no!” Janice gasped, almost dropping her mashie. Bob turned and gulped.

  Standing in front of them was a being at least ten feet tall. He had budding horns on his forehead, and tiny wings on his back. He was dressed in a pair of dungarees and a white sweatshirt with EBUS TECH written across it in scarlet letters. Scuffed white buckskins were on his tremendous feet, and he had a blond crew cut.

  “Damn,” he said, looking at Bob and Janice. “Knew I should have taken Invisibility in college.” He wrapped his arms around his stomach and puffed out his cheeks. Instantly his legs disappeared. Puffing out his cheeks still more he was able to make his stomach vanish. But that was as far as it went.

  “Can’t do it,” he said, releasing his stored-up air. His stomach and legs came back into visibility. “Haven’t got the knack. Damn.”

  “What do you want’“ Janice asked, drawing herself to her full slender five foot three.

  “Want? Let me see. Oh yes. The fan.” He walked across the room and picked up a large floor fan.

  “Just a minute,” Bob shouted. He walked up to the giant, his golf club poised. Janice followed close behind him. “Where do you think you’re going with that7”