The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  Scaler, riding nearest the mountain, continued forward, but Seasickness suddenly switched her course, heading straight for the glare. Amherst jerked the guiding rein, but she did not turn. Then, as the beam fell full on him, he felt himself being drawn. Ahead was the light, bright, warm, hypnotizing-at either side was nothing.

  He felt his mind sinking, felt his body go lax, lean forward. Then something flew before his eyes. For a second, the light was blocked off, and in that second his strength flowed back. At once, he realized the thing ahead had been drawing his will from him-that if he were ever to get away, he must shield Seasickness' eyes and pull the rein hard. Now the bulk was so close that he could make out a great, yawning hole, inside which a piston-like rod moved up and down.

  As he stared, a rock rolled into the hole and, on the descent of the piston, was ground to bits. With a mighty effort, he shut his eyes. Then, raising his visor to the freezing air, he gripped Seasickness' reins in his teeth and, blindfolding her with his hands, pulled with all the strength he had in him. She swerved.

  Now-if the thing didn't change direction, they were safe. Otherwise they were sunk. Without looking full into the light, Amherst watched breathing deeply to still the pounding of his heart. Safe! The thing moved steadily forward, unaware that its prey had escaped.

  Scaler, outside the hypnotic power of the light, asked what the trouble was.

  'We couldn't change direction while the light shone on us,' Amherst told him, 'But that wasn't the strangest thing. That beacon or animal or whatever it was, ate rocks! Outside of the Pyramid Builder of Mars, I've never heard of that before.'

  'Evidently it wanted to add you to its mineral diet,' Scaler observed.

  'And it almost did.' Amherst laughed in relief. 'So it must be the extreme of omnivorous, needing life as well as minerals to keep it going.'

  'Just another verse in the saga of evolution.' Scaler shifted his position on Amity's back and closed his eyes for a few minute's rest.

  ***

  Two terrestrial days later they sighted the domes of Aquia which, huddled on the Ganymedian waste, resembled the half-buried eggs of some giant bird, left ages back to turn the same slate gray as the rest of the landscape. Faint on each dome were the outlines of a door, sole evidence of human habitation in the clustered mounds. Still, to the two men, stiff and tired after days and nights of riding, the sight of the small, domed village was cheering.

  'So this is Aquia,' Scaler sighed. 'Aquia of Ganymede. It sounds almost Biblical.'

  From far away came a dull roar. 'Just to make it more so,' Amherst answered, 'here's the flood.'

  Bob Amherst looked admiringly at the slim girl in the trading station.

  'Is it you, Carol, or is it what you're going to be ten years hence?' he said lightly, his eyes twinkling. Last time he had seen the girl, she had been a gangling child of sixteen or so; now she was a blonde goddess, rounded, appealing, vital. Her golden hair and blue eyes were in sharp contrast to the drabness of the trading station. She seemed to have grown up all at once.

  'I hope it's both.' She shut the door against the freezing outside air.

  'Why, you're beautiful.' To hide his astonishment, he spoke to her as a child. 'Your hair is combed, and your face is clean, and-'

  'And you're too fresh.' Her eyes turned to Scaler.

  'Oh, I forgot. This is Mr. Scaler, Carol.'

  Scaler's brown eyes swept over her appreciatively.

  'Where's your father?' Amherst asked.

  Carol's face sobered.

  'Father didn't come back last flood time. I'm carrying on.'

  Didn't come back! There was no need to say more. Everyone knew what it meant to be caught away from the domed village when the torrents of water came thundering down. It was tough! Carl Kent could be spared least of the traders on Ganymede. And it was a pity that he had to go so soon after his precious formula had been completed. It was too bad for Carol, too. She was all alone now.

  They followed her through the underground passage which led from the trading station to her living quarters. Under the domes, so exact in their engineering that they could withstand the terrific pressure of water during the flood, the air was warm. They removed their vacuum suits.

  Outside Carol's door which, like all the rest opened onto a central square, Nympus and Earthmen scurried about to make ready for the deluge. Like a huge ant hill, the village teemed with activity. Tanks had to be made ready to store the water from which their oxygen came. The nitrogen mixers had to be checked so that they would be prepared to blend perfectly the two gases and insure the air supply for the duration of the flood.

  While Amherst went about his business, looking over the cree, tethering the hipps in their floating cages anchored to the village, seeing that all was ready for the tidal rush, Scaler and Carol sat together in the warm, Earthlike room that Carl Kent had furnished.

  'When you said you were carrying on here, the most important trading station on Ganymede, I could hardly believe it.' Scaler's warm, brown eyes rested admiringly on the girl's face.

  'I have to. I'm the only one who could. Father was caught in the flood before he had a chance to set up laboratories in the other stations.'

  'Was he planning to? I should think it would be dangerous to let too many people learn his secret.'

  'Not at all,' Carol answered. 'There's no cree anywhere but Ganymede, and Cree, Inc., covers the entire planet.'

  'Oh, I didn't know.' He moved over to sit next to her. 'It's too bad for you to bury yourself here,' he said abruptly. 'You don't belong. You should be living on Earth-seeing, doing and, most important, being seen.'

  Carol smiled. She had never visited the small pinprick in the black called Earth, but she had read of it, read of its cities built into the air, its underground highways, its beautiful women. 'Tell me about the World,' she said softly. 'Is it so different from Ganymede?'

  'So very different, I don't know where to begin.'

  'I've always wanted to see New York.' She looked enviously at Scaler.

  Amherst entered the room in time to hear her last words.

  'It's nothing but froth, Carol,' he broke in. 'There are many things on Earth we wouldn't want on Ganymede.'

  Scaler smiled.

  'Gangsters and greed,' he said, 'went out long ago.'

  'Gangsters did,' Amherst answered shortly. Suddenly the thought of Scaler's presence during the long flood period annoyed him. Perhaps, without knowing, he had been looking forward to being alone with Carol. Now, he realized that Scaler, shut in the underground village with nothing to occupy his time, would make that impossible.

  At that moment, deep underground as they were, they heard the crash of mountain walls as the flood came pouring down. As always, in the village of the cree-gatherers, it was quiet, almost menacingly quiet, as if everyone stood impassive, waiting to see whether or not this time the domes would hold. For a few hours, until the air tanks were working efficiently, they would have this strange, dead sensation in their heads.

  As Amherst had foreseen, Carol and Kirt Scaler spent much time together. Often they walked the narrow tunnels leading to the farms and there stood on the flat-covered expanse, like some tremendous basement, the water valves overhead dripping flood water brought from the surface to the crop below. And sometimes they stood by the nitrogen mixers, deafened by the mighty roar as the artificial air came pouring out.

  Indeed, Scaler seemed to have perpetual interest where life at Aquia was concerned. Often Amherst entered a room to hear him questioning Carol about various technicalities. But at other times, he fought clear of anything to do with Ganymede and, instead, talked at length about the world Carol had never seen. At such times, she listened fascinated, a faraway look in her blue eyes as if they saw, through Scaler's, the things he was describing.

  As the days passed, Amherst became more and more aware of Scaler's attraction for the girl though, as yet, he was not sure whether it was the man himself who charmed her or the world he came from.
Thinking to find out, he waited for one of the few times that he and Carol were alone together. Then, walking over and taking her chin in his hand, he asked, 'Just how much do you know about Kirt Scaler, Carol?'

  'Not very much. What difference does it make?'

  'It might make a lot. It might be a revival of the old, old stories of the city slicker and the farmer's daughter.'

  She jerked away angrily.

  'Mind your own business, Bob Amherst.'

  He put his arm around her.

  'You're my business.'

  'Since when.'

  Lacking an answer, he pulled her to him and kissed her roughly. She jerked away, flouncing angrily from the room.

  He watched her go absentmindedly, not so much concerned with her anger as with trying to decide what it would mean to him if she were indeed serious where Kirt Scaler were concerned.

  Since Carl's death, he had felt an increasing sense of responsibility for Carol-and something more too. For Carol, even as a young girl, had aroused in him a more than friendly interest. So the thought of her falling in love and, perhaps, marrying someone else was painful. Besides, the more he saw of Scaler, the more he realized how uncommunicative the man really was. He had not yet given reason for his trip to Aquia other than the obviously ridiculous one of 'touring.'

  And surely, attractive as Carol was, tales of her charm had not drawn him almost four hundred million miles through space. Still, aside from Scaler's interest in the life at Aquia, so far Carol seemed his only excuse for coming.

  ***

  For the next few days, Carol treated Amherst coolly, never giving him a chance to speak to her alone and continuing to spend much time in Scaler's company. Amherst seldom entered a room but that he saw the golden head in close proximity to the brown, and heard, with a twinge at his heart, the soft note in Scaler's voice.

  As the days passed, however, Scaler seemed to become restless. Often he wandered the village alone, not waiting for Carol. Once Amherst found him scanning a terrestrial calendar and figuring on a small pad he carried. Consequently, Amherst's heart lightened a bit, though, as yet, he could not break through Carol's reserve.

  Just a day and a half before complete ebb, he was sitting alone in the trading station when the girl entered.

  'It's funny,' she said abruptly, 'I can't find the formula. I know it by heart, of course, but the paper is gone.'

  'Gone!' Amherst jumped to his feet, recalling, for the first time in weeks, the rumor that red cree had been found on Io.

  'Don't get excited, Bob,' she said coldly, seating herself leisurely. 'What would anyone want it for?'

  'They've discovered red cree on Io.' Amherst was halfway out the door. What a fool he had been not to tell Carol, especially after he had been told to bring the news to Carl. She hurried to follow him.

  Inside the laboratory, he turned to face her.

  'It's my fault,' he groaned. 'I should have told you. News of your father's death must have knocked it from my mind. Are you sure it's gone? Nothing seems to have been disturbed.'

  'Yes. I kept it here.' She opened a drawer.

  'Who has been in this room, Carol? Who, besides yourself, has ever been here?'

  'Some Nympus gatherers, when Father was alive.'

  'Who else?' Amherst paced the floor impatiently. 'They haven't the intelligence to steal it.' He paused for a moment. 'Did you ever bring Scaler in?' he asked.

  'Yes, once. He wanted to see red cree under treatment.'

  'Of course he did.' Amherst turned abruptly. 'Stupid of me not to have suspected it. He was undoubtedly sent here by Ionian Products just to get the formula. Touring, indeed! No wonder he recognized the Blanket Bat!'

  'What shall we do?' Carol rummaged helplessly through the papers in the drawer.

  'Search the village. He can't possibly leave until the water ebbs and that's at least a day and a half away. He must be here somewhere. There's no place else to go.'

  They hunted the village for Scaler, but the search was fruitless. It seemed impossible for a man to disappear in the small underground village, and yet five precious hours had gone and they had found no trace of him. It was incredible.

  'Bob, what will it mean to Cree, Inc., if Ionian Products exports blue cree to Earth?' Carol asked anxiously after a while.

  'Severe competition, a glutted market, shrinkage in sales, eventual bankruptcy, perhaps. You know there's an enormous expenditure required to keep the company going on Ganymede.'

  'Then we've got to find Kirt Scaler. Father would-would have hated that!'

  'I know.' Amherst stood undecided for a moment. 'There's only one thing left for us to do though: we must start over. Somewhere, we have missed him.'

  Three hours later, footsore and weary, they returned again to the farms, their second quest as unproductive as the first.

  Far in the distance a lone Nympus worked the field, at the entrance to the tunnel.

  'You know strange Earthman?' Amherst spoke wearily to the toiling Nympus.

  'Yeh.' The crusty, mushroom head nodded rapidly.

  'Have you seen him today?'

  'Yeh.' The head nodded again.

  'Where!' Amherst grasped the green, scaled shoulder. The Nympus waved an arm vaguely toward the outskirts of the farm, to the bare rock wall where the farm ended.

  'Where?' Amherst shook the native's shoulder excitedly.

  'In Iticht phulph.'

  'In locked valve,' Amherst shouted. 'Of course. It's the only place he could be.'

  At that moment, far down the farm, almost where the rock wall began, a stream of water shot heavily to the earth. 'That's the one,' Amherst cried. 'That valve was just opened to the outside. Carol,' he cried as he started running toward the water, 'get me a vacuum suit and bring it here-quickly!'

  When he reached the spot, the water had thinned to a narrow stream. Evidently ebb was over. A mound of creeearth beneath the pipe opening showed how Scaler had managed to reach his hiding place. Through the slanting man-sized aqueduct, Amherst could see light from above. Undoubtedly Scaler had just escaped. Probably knowledge that the Nympus farmer had seen him, had made him aware of the danger of hiding there longer.

  However, it was impossible to follow until Carol returned with the vacuum suit. He waited impatiently, comforting himself with the thought that Scaler could not get very far in the torrents of the afterflood on foot, and that, as no one had been above ground since the flood started, there was no hipp tethered outside to carry him. As relief for his impatience, Amherst piled more cree on the mound Scaler had left. It would save time when Carol arrived with the suit if he could raise himself easily to the opening in the rock ceiling.

  At last Carol, clad in a vacuum suit herself, came running across the field.

  'You can't come,' Amherst told her. Hurriedly he stepped into the garment she handed him. Without replying she stood watching him draw his long body through the pipe opening.

  Creeping up the slanting hundred yard aqueduct as quickly as possible, Amherst emerged dripping to the wet Ganymedian surface. A few seconds later, Carol appeared.

  'Go back.' He was trying to free his sillicellu visor of the mud it had gathered on the ascent through the wet pipe. Scaler was not in sight.

  A rocket ship, however, was visible in the sky. He started walking, Carol beside him. Scaler might easily be in the valley on the other side of the hill.

  'What's that ship doing?' Carol asked. 'It can't land here.'

  'It looks as if it's going to.'

  True, the ship was coming lower. A mile or so in front of them, it lost altitude rapidly. Wonderingly, they watched it, knowing no rocket ship had ever landed in the muddy areas of Ganymede until, straining their eyes, they saw a ladder unfurling from its fuselage. So that was going to be the manner of Scaler's escape!

  Amherst started to run, splashing through the water and mudholes which slowed his progress. Carol followed, gaping with the exertion of pulling her self in the heavy suit through the sticky mud.
>
  Hopelessly, they saw the ship dip behind the brow of the hill, to rise a second later with a black dot clinging to its downflung ladder. As they watched disconsolately, the red speck soared high in the sky. Red! The color of the space ships of Io! For, since the signing of the Interplanetary Peace Treaty, each planet colored its space ships differently. There was no doubt now where their formula was going.

  Carol sat down despondently. For a few moments neither spoke. At last they rose and, silently, started to walk toward the village of the cree gatherers.

  'What was the formula, Carol?' Amherst asked finally. 'As long as Scaler is taking it to Ionian Products, I might as well know.'

  'It was simple,' the girl said. 'It merely duplicated the chemical changes taking place in the moss after the passing of the flood. The color change in cree is due to ammonia in the air, as you know. Well, part of the medicinal value lies there and part in latent eggs deposited in the moss. Father's formula was exactly that: an equal mix of blue gallnuts and ammonia.'

  Bob Amherst stopped abruptly. 'Gallnuts, did you say? Blue gallnuts?'

  Yes. It's the name given the vegetable excrescence which forms around the egg of the gall-ant. We breed gall-ants, pulverize their eggs and-'

  'Carol!' Amherst pounded his knee in delight. 'We're saved! Much good our formula will do them,' He waved toward Io, ghostlike in the pale sky.

  'Why? They've got the cree on Io.'

  'They've got the cree all right, and they've got the formula-but they haven't got the ants! And they'll never get them either. Gall-ants can't live in methane-I remember that from Biology-and the air on Io is mostly methane!'

  'Why can't they?'

  'Because their systems are geared to breathing ammoniated air- exactly the opposite of methanated air. Don't you see? Ammonia is a base: methane is a hydrocarbon, an acid.'

  'Well, can't they make ammonia?'

  'Of course. But where will they get the ants? Gall-ants breed only on Ganymede, in Ganymedian cree. To get the ants they'd have to buy our cree and, inasmuch as they'd have to use the ant eggs to get the gallnuts to make the formula to turn their cree blue,' Amherst drew a long breath, 'the ants couldn't reproduce. So they'd have to continue buying our cree to get the ants to get the nuts to get-'