The People Trap

by Sheckley, Robert;

  Arnold hung up. “It seems,” he said, “there’s not much demand for Tangreese on Earth. There are only about fifty Meldgens here, and the cost of transporting it to the northern periphery is prohibitively high.”

  Gregor raised both eyebrows and looked at the Producer. Apparently it had hit its stride, for Tangreese was pouring out like water from a high-pressure hose. There was gray powder over everything in the room. It was half a foot deep in front of the machine.

  “Never mind,” Arnold said. “It must be used for something else.” He returned to his desk and opened several more large books.

  “Shouldn’t we turn it off in the meantime?” Gregor asked.

  “Certainly not,” Arnold said. “It’s free, don’t you understand? It’s making money for us.”

  He plunged into his books. Gregor began to pace the floor, but found it difficult wading through the ankle-deep Tangreese. He slumped into his chair, wondering why he hadn’t gone into landscape gardening.

  By early evening, a gray dust filled the room to a depth of several feet. Several pens, pencils, a briefcase and a small filing cabinet were already lost in it, and Gregor was beginning to wonder if die floor would hold the weight. He had to shovel a path to the door, using a wastepaper basket as an improvised spade.

  Arnold finally closed his books with a look of weary satisfaction. “There is another use.”

  “What?”

  “Tangreese is used as a building material. After a few weeks’ exposure to the air, it hardens like granite, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Get a construction company on the telephone. We’ll take care of this right now.”

  Gregor called the Toledo-Mars Construction Company and told a Mr. O’Toole that they were prepared to supply them with an almost unlimited quantity of Tangreese.

  “Tangreese, eh?” O’Toole said. “Not too popular as a building material these days. Doesn’t hold paint, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Gregor said.

  “Fact. Tell you what. Tangreese can be eaten by some crazy race. Why don’t you—”

  “We prefer to sell it as a building material,” Gregor said.

  “Well, I suppose we can buy it. Always some cheap construction going on. Give you fifteen a ton for it.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Cents.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Gregor said.

  His partner nodded sagely when he heard the offer. “That’s all right. Say this machine of ours produces ten tons a day, every day, year after year. Let’s see…” He did some quick figuring with his slide rule. “That’s almost five hundred and fifty dollars a year. Won’t make us rich, but it’ll help pay the rent.”

  “But we can’t leave it here,” Gregor said, looking with alarm at the ever-increasing pile of Tangreese.

  “Of course not. We’ll find a vacant lot in the country and turn it loose. They can haul the stuff away any time they like.”

  Gregor called O’Toole and said they would be happy to do business.

  “All right,” O’Toole said. “You know where our plant is. Just truck the stuff in any old time.”

  “Us truck it in? I thought you—”

  “At fifteen cents a ton? No, we’re doing you a favor just taking it off your hands. You truck it in.”

  “That’s bad,” Arnold said, after Gregor had hung up. “The cost of transporting it—”

  “Would be far more than fifteen cents a ton,” Gregor said. “You’d better shut that thing off until we decide what to do.”

  Arnold waded up to the Producer. “Let me see,” he said. “To turn it off I use the Laxian Key.” He studied the front of the machine.

  “Go ahead, turn it off,” Gregor said.

  “Just a moment.”

  “Are you going to turn it off or not?”

  Arnold straightened up and gave an embarrassed little laugh. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  “We need a Laxian Key to turn it off. And we don’t seem to have one.”

  The next few hours were spent in frantic telephone calls around the country. Gregor and Arnold contacted museums, research institutions, the archaeological departments of colleges, and anyone else they could think of. No one had ever seen a Laxian Key or heard of one being found.

  In desperation, Arnold called Joe, the Interstellar Junkman, at his downtown penthouse.

  “No, I ain’t got no Laxian Key,” Joe said. “Why you think I sold you the gadget so cheap?”

  They put down the telephone and stared at each other. The Meldgen Free Producer was cheerfully blasting out its stream of worthless powder. Two chairs and a radiator had disappeared into it, and the gray Tangreese was approaching desk-top level.

  “Nice little wage earner,” Gregor said.

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “We?”

  Arnold returned to his books and spent the rest of the night searching for another use for Tangreese. Gregor had to shovel the gray powder into the hall, to keep their office from becoming completely submerged.

  The morning came, and the sun gleamed gaily on their windows through a film of gray dust. Arnold stood up and yawned.

  “No luck?” Gregor asked.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Gregor waded out for coffee. When he returned, the building superintendent and two large red-faced policemen were shouting at Arnold.

  “You gotta get every bit of that sand outta my hall!” the super screamed.

  “Yes, and there’s an ordinance against operating a factory in a business district,” one of the red-faced policemen said.

  “This isn’t a factory,” Gregor explained. “This is a Meldgen Free—”

  “I say it’s a factory,” the policeman said. “And I say you gotta cease operation at once.”

  “That’s our problem,” Arnold said. “We can’t seem to turn it off.”

  “Can’t turn it off?” The policeman glared at them suspiciously. “You trying to kid me? I say you gotta turn it off.”

  “Officer, I swear to you—”

  “Listen, wise guy, I’ll be back in an hour. You get that thing turned off and this mess out of here, or I’m giving you a summons.” The three men marched out.

  Gregor and Arnold looked at each other, then at the Free Producer. The Tangreese was desk-top level now, and coming steadily.

  “Damn it all,” Arnold said, with a touch of hysteria, “there must be a way of working it out. There must be a market! It’s free, I tell you. Every bit of this powder is free, free, free!”

  “Steady,” Gregor said, wearily scratching sand out of his hair.

  “Don’t you understand? When you get something free, in unlimited quantities, there has to be an application for it. And all this is free—”

  The door opened, and a tall, thin man in a dark business suit walked in, holding a complex little gadget in his hand.

  “So here it is,” the man said.

  Gregor was struck by a sudden wild thought. “Is that a Laxian Key?” he asked.

  “A what key? No, I don’t suppose it is,” the man said. “It is a drainometer.”

  “Oh,” Gregor said.

  “And it seems to have brought me to the source of the trouble,” the man said. “I’m Mr. Garstairs.” He cleared sand from Gregor’s desk, took a last reading on his drainometer and started to fill out a printed form.

  “What’s all this about?” Arnold asked.

  “I’m from the Metropolitan Power Company,” Garstairs said. “Starting around noon yesterday, we observed a sudden enormous drain on our facilities.”

  “And it’s coming from here?” Gregor asked.

  “From that machine of yours,” Garstairs said. He completed his form, folded it and put it in his pocket. “Thanks for your cooperation. You will be billed for this, of course.” With some difficulty he opened the door, then turned and took another look at the Free Producer.

  “It must be making some
thing extremely valuable,” he said, “to justify the expenditure of so much power. What is it? Platinum dust?”

  He smiled, nodded pleasantly and left.

  Gregor turned to Arnold. “Free power, eh?”

  “Well,” Arnold said, “I guess it just grabs it from the nearest power source.”

  “So I see. Draws power out of the air, out of space, out of the sun. And out of the power company’s lines, if they’re handy.”

  “So it seems. But the basic principle—”

  “To hell with the basic principle!” Gregor shouted. “We can’t turn this damned thing off without a Laxian Key, no one’s got a Laxian

  Key, we’re submerged in worthless dust which we can’t even afford to truck out, and we’re probably burning up power like a sun gone nova!”

  “There must be a solution,” Arnold said sullenly.

  “Yeah? Suppose you find it.”

  Arnold sat down where his desk had been and covered his eyes. There was a loud knock on the door, and angry voices outside.

  “Lock the door,” Arnold said.

  Gregor locked it. Arnold thought for a few moments longer, then stood up.

  “All is not lost,” he said. “Our fortunes will still be made from this machine.”

  “Let’s just destroy it,” Gregor said. “Drop it in an ocean or something.”

  “No! I’ve got it now! Come on, let’s get the spaceship warmed up.”

  The next few days were hectic ones for AAA Ace. They had to hire men, at exorbitant rates, to clear the building of Tangreese. Then came the problem of getting the machine, still spouting gray dust, into their spaceship. But at last, everything was done. The Free Producer sat in the hold, rapidly filling it with Tangreese, and their ship was out of the system and moving fast on overdrive.

  “It’s only logical,” Arnold explained later. “Naturally there’s no market for Tangreese on Earth. Therefore there’s no use trying to sell it on Earth. But on the planet Meldge—”

  “I don’t like it,” Gregor said.

  “It can’t fail. It costs too much to transport Tangreese to Meldge. But we’re moving our entire factory there. We can pour out a constant stream of the stuff.”

  “Suppose the market is low?” Gregor asked.

  “How low can it get’ This stuff is like bread to the Meldgens. It’s their basic diet. How can we miss?”

  After two weeks in space, Meldge hove in sight on their starboard bow. It came none too soon. Tangreese had completely filled the hold. They had sealed it off, but the increasing pressure threatened to burst the sides of the ship. They had to dump tons of it every day, but dumping took time, and there was a loss of heat and air in the process.

  So they spiraled into Meldge with every inch of their ship crammed with Tangreese, low on oxygen and extremely cold.

  As soon as they had landed, a large orange-skinned customs official came on board.

  “Welcome,” he said. “Seldom do visitors come to our unimportant little planet. Do you expect to stay long?”

  “Probably,” Arnold said. “We’re going to set up a business.”

  “Excellent!” the official said, smiling happily. “Our planet needs new blood, new enterprise. Might I inquire what business?”

  “We’re going to sell Tangreese, the basic food of—”

  The official’s face darkened. “You’re going to sell what5”

  “Tangreese. We have a Free Producer, and—”

  The official pressed a button on a wrist dial. “I am sorry, you must leave at once.”

  “But we’ve got passports, clearance papers—”

  “And we have laws. You must blast off immediately and take your Free Producer with you.”

  “Now look here,” Gregor said, ‘there’s supposed to be free enterprise on this planet.”

  “Not in the production of Tangreese there isn’t.”

  Outside, a dozen Army tanks rumbled on to the landing field and ringed themselves around the ship. The official backed out of the port and started down the ladder.

  “Wait!” Gregor cried in desperation. “I suppose you’re afraid of unfair competition. Well, take the Free Producer as our gift.”

  “No!” Arnold shouted.

  “Yes! Just dig it out and take it. Feed your poor with it. Just raise a statue to us some time.”

  A second row of Army tanks appeared. Overhead, antiquated jet planes dipped low over the field.

  “Get off this planet!” the official shouted. “Do you really think you can sell Tangreese on Meldge? Look around!”

  They looked. The landing field was gray and powdery, and the buildings were the same unpainted gray. Beyond them stretched dull gray fields, to a range of low gray mountains.

  On all sides, as far as they could see, everything was Tangreese gray.

  “Do you mean,” Gregor asked, “that the whole planet—”

  “Figure it out for yourself,” the official said, backing down the ladder. “The Old Science originated here, and there are always fools who have to tamper with its artifacts. Now get going. But if you ever find a Laxian Key, come back and name your price.”

  THE LAST WEAPON

  Edsel was in a murderous mood. He, Parke, and Faxon had spent three weeks in this part of the deadlands, breaking into every mound they came across, not finding anything, and moving on to the next. The swift Martian summer was passing, and each day became a little colder. Each day Edsel’s nerves, uncertain at the best of times, had frayed a little more. Little Faxon was cheerful, dreaming of all the money they would make when they found the weapons, and Parke plodded silently along, apparently made of iron, not saying a word unless he was spoken to.

  But Edsel had reached his limit. They had broken into another mound, and again there had been no sign of the lost Martian weapons. The watery sun seemed to be glaring at him, and the stars were visible in an impossible blue sky. The afternoon cold seeped into Edsel’s insulated suit, stiffening his joints, knotting his big muscles.

  Quite suddenly, Edsel decided to kill Parke. He had disliked the silent man since they had formed the partnership on Earth. He disliked him even more than he despised Faxon.

  Edsel stopped.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked Parke, his voice ominously low.

  Parke shrugged his slender shoulders negligently. His pale, hollow face showed no trace of expression.

  “Do you?” Edsel asked.

  Parke shrugged again.

  A bullet in the head, Edsel decided, reaching for his gun.

  “Wait!” Faxon pleaded, coming up between them. “Don’t fly off, Edsel. Just think of all the money we can make when we Find the weapons!” The little man’s eyes glowed at the thought. “They’re right around here somewhere, Edsel. The next mound, maybe.”

  Edsel hesitated, glaring at Parke. Right now he wanted to kill more than anything else in the world. If he had known it would be like this, when they formed the company on Earth…It had seemed so easy then. He had the plaque, the one which told where a cache of the fabulous lost Martian weapons were. Parke was able to read the Martian script, and Faxon could finance the expedition. So, he had figured all they’d have to do would be to land on Mars and walk up to the mound where the stuff was hidden.

  Edsel had never been off Earth before. He hadn’t counted on the weeks of freezing, starving on concentrated rations, always dizzy from breathing thin, tired air circulating through a replenisher. He hadn’t thought about the sore, aching muscles you get, dragging your way through the thick Martian brush.

  All he had thought about was the price a Government—any Government—would pay for those legendary weapons.

  “I’m sorry,” Edsel said, making up his mind suddenly. “This place gets me. Sorry I blew up, Parke. Lead on.”

  Parke nodded, and started again. Faxon breathed a sigh of relief, and followed Parke.

  After all, Edsel thought, I can kill them any time.

  They found the correct mound in m
id-afternoon, just as Edsel’s patience was wearing thin again. It was a strange, massive affair, just as the script had said. Under a few inches of dirt was metal. The men scraped and found a door.

  “Here, I’ll blast it open,” Edsel said, drawing his revolver.

  Parke pushed him aside, turned the handle, and opened the door.

  Inside was a tremendous room. And there, row upon gleaming row, were the legendary lost weapons of Mars, the missing artifacts of Martian civilization.

  The three men stood for a moment, just looking . Here was the treasure that men had almost given up looking for. Since man had landed on Mars, the ruins of great cities had been explored. Scattered across the plains were ruined vehicles, art forms, tools, everything indicating the ghost of a titanic civilization, a thousand years beyond Earth’s. Patiently deciphered scripts had told of the great wars ravaging the surface of Mars. The scripts stopped too soon, though, because nothing told what had happened to the Martians. There hadn’t been an intelligent being on Mars for several thousand years. Somehow, all animal life on the planet had been obliterated.

  And, apparently, the Martians had taken their weapons with them.

  These lost weapons, Edsel knew, were worth their weight in radium. There just wasn’t anything like them.

  The men went inside. Edsel picked up the first thing his hand reached. It looked like a .45, but bigger. He went to the door and pointed the weapon at a shrub on the plain.

  “Don’t fire it,” Faxon said, as Edsel took aim. “It might backfire or something. Let the Government men fire them, after we sell.”

  Edsel squeezed the trigger. The shrub, seventy-five feet away, erupted in a bright red flash.

  “Not bad,” Edsel said, patting the gun. He put it down and reached for another.

  “Please, Edsel,” Faxon said, squinting nervously at him. “There’s no need to try them out. You might set off an atomic bomb or something.”

  “Shut up,” Edsel said, examining the weapon for a firing stud.

  “Don’t shoot any more,” Faxon pleaded. He looked to Parke for support, but the silent man was watching Edsel. “You know, something in this place might have been responsible for the destruction of the Martian race. You wouldn’t want to set it off again, would you?”