“Noo wait a minute,” Captain Ramsay said to the Xerians. “Ye have na—”
“We are not barbarians,” the Xerian said with dignity. “We gave Ess Pu fifteen million Universal Credits to do a job for us and he has failed. Unless he can return the fifteen million, plus costs, he must work it out. The man-hour”—here Macduff was seen to wince—“the man-hour on Xeria is the equivalent of one sixty-fifth of a credit.”
“This is highly irregular,” the Captain said. “However, it’s out of my jurisdiction now. You, Macduff—stop looking so smug. You get off at Xeria too, remember. I advise ye to stay out of Ess Pu’s way.”
“I expect he’ll be busy most of the time,” Macduff said cheerfully. “I hate to remind a supposedly competent officer of his duties, but haven’t you forgotten the slight matter of the ship’s pool?”
“What?” Ramsay glanced blankly at the pulped fruit. “The pool’s called off, of course.”
“Nonsense,” Macduff interrupted. “Let’s have no evasions. One might suspect you of trying to avoid a payoff.”
“Mon, ye’re daft. How can there be a payoff? The lottery was based on guessing the seed count in a sphyghi fruit and it’s perfectly obvious the sphyghi has no seeds. Vurra weel. If no one has any objections—”
“I object!” Macduff cried. “On behalf of my ward, I demand that every single guess be counted and tabulated.”
“Be reasonable,” Ramsay urged. “If ye’re merely delaying the evil moment when I kick ye off the Sutter—”
“You’ve got to wind up the pool legally,” Macduff insisted.
“Pah, shut yer clatterin’ trap,” Ramsay snapped sourly, picking up the sealed box and attaching a small gadget to it. “Just as ye like. But I am on to ye, Macduff. Noo, quiet please, everybody.”
He closed his eyes and his lips moved in a soundless mumble. The box flew open, disgorging a clutter of folded papers. At Ramsay’s gesture a passenger stepped forward and began to open the slips, reading off names and guesses.
“So ye gain pairhaps five minutes’ reprieve,” Ramsay said under his breath to Macduff. “Then oot ye go after Ess Pu and let me say it is pairfectly obvious ye lured the Algolian out of the Sutter on purpose.”
“Nonsense,” Macduff said briskly. “Am I to blame if Ess Pu focused his ridiculous anti-social emotions on me?”
“Aye,” Ramsay said. “Ye ken dom well ye are.”
“Male Kor-ze-Kabloom, seven hundred fifty,” called the passenger unfolding another slip. “Lorma Secundus, two thousand ninety-nine. Ao, per—”
There was a pause.
“Well?” Captain Ramsay prompted, collaring Macduff. “Well, mon?”
“Terence Lao-T’se Macduff—” the passenger continued and again halted.
“What is it? What number did he guess?” Ramsay demanded, pausing at the open port with one foot lifted ready to boot the surprisingly philosophical Macduff down the gangplank. “I ashed ye a question! What number’s on the slip?”
“Zero,” the passenger said faintly.
“Exactly!” Macduff declared, wriggling free. “And now, Captain Ramsay, I’ll thank you to hand over half the ship’s pool to me, as Ao’s guardian—less, of course, the price of our passage to Lesser Vega. As for Ess Pu’s half of the take, send it to him with my compliments.
“Perhaps it will knock a few months off his sentence, which, if my figures are correct, come to nine hundred and forty-six Xerian years. A Macduff forgives even his enemies. Come, Ao, my dear. I must choose a suitable cabin.”
So saying, Macduff lit a fresh cigar and sauntered slowly away, leaving Captain Ramsay staring straight ahead and moving his lips as though in slow prayer. The prayer became audible.
“Macduff,” Ramsay called. “Macduff! How did ye do it?”
“I,” said Macduff over his shoulder, “am a scientist.”
THE Lesser Vegan cabaret hummed with festivity. A pair of comedians exchanged quips and banter among the tables. At one table Ao sat between Macduff and Captain Ramsay.
“I am still waiting to hear how ye did it, Macduff,” Ramsay said. “A bargain’s a bargain, ye know. I put my name on yon application, didn’t I?”
“I cannot but admit,” Macduff said, “that your signature facilitated my getting Ao’s guardianship, bless her heart. Some champagne, Ao?” But Ao made no response. She was exchanging glances, less blank than usual, with a young Lesser Vegan male at a nearby table.
“Come, noo,” Ramsay insisted. “Remember I wull have to turn over my log at the end of the voyage. I must know what happened concerning yon sphyghi. Otherwise, d’ye think I’d hae gone oot on a limb and guaranteed yer tortuous character, even though I carefully added, ‘to the best of my knowledge’ ? No. Ye wrote thot zero when I saw ye do it, long before the fruit ripened.”
“Right,” Macduff said blandly, sipping champagne. “It was a simple problem in misdirection. I suppose there’s no harm in telling you how I did it. Consider the circumstances. You were going to maroon me on Xeria, side by side with that lobster.
“Obviously I had to cut him down to my size by discrediting him with the Xerians. Winning the pool was an unexpected secondary development. Merely a stroke of well-deserved good luck, aided by applied scientific technique.”
“Ye mean that stuff ye wrote down on the paper Ess Pu found—the gibble-gabble aboot interferometers and ion-analyzers? So ye did find some way to count the seeds—och, I’m wrong there, am I?”
“Naturally.” Macduff twirled his glass and preened himself slightly. “I wrote that paper for Ess Pu’s eyes. I had to keep him so busy protecting his sphyghi and chasing me that he never had a spare moment to think.”
“I still dinna ken,” Ramsay confessed. “Even if ye’d known the richt answer in advance, how could ye foresee the pool would be based on sphyghi?”
“Oh, that was the simplest thing of all. Consider the odds! What else could it be, with the Aldebaran Lottery fresh in every mind and the whole ship reeking of contraband sphyghi? If no one else had suggested it I was prepared to bring it up myself and—what’s this? Go away! Get out!”
He was addressing himself to the two comedians, who had worked their way around to Macduff’s table. Captain Ramsay glanced up in time to see them commence a new act.
The laugh-getting technique of insult has never basically changed all through the ages, and Galactic expansion has merely broadened and deepened its variety. Derision has naturally expanded to include species as well as races.
The comedians, chattering insanely, began a fairly deft imitation of two apes searching each other for fleas. There was an outburst of laughter, not joined by those customers who had sprung from simian stock.
“Tush!” Ramsay said irately, pushing back his chair. “Ye dom impudent—”
Macduff lifted a placating palm. “Tut, tut, Captain. Strive for the objective viewpoint. Merely a matter of semantics, after all.” He chuckled tolerantly. “Rise above such insularity, as I do, and enjoy the skill of these mummers in the abstract art of impersonation. I was about to explain why I had to keep Ess Pu distracted. I feared he might notice how fast the sphyghi were ripening.”
“Pah,” Ramsay said, but relapsed into his chair as the comedians moved on and began a new skit. “Weel, continue.”
“Misdirection,” Macduff said cheerfully. “Have you ever had a more incompetent crew member than I?”
“No,” Ramsay said, considering. “Never in my—”
“Quite so. I was tossed like spindrift from task to task until I finally reached Atmospheric Controls, which was exactly where I wanted to be. Crawling down ventilating pipes has certain advantages. For example, it was the work of a moment to empty a phial of two-four-five-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid”—he rolled the syllables lushly—“trichloro-phenoxyacetic acid into Ess Pu’s ventilator. The stuff must have got into everything, including the sphyghi.”
“Trichloro—what? Ye mean ye gimmicked the sphyghi “before the pool?”
“Certainl
y. I told you the pool was a later by-product. My goal at first was simply to get Ess Pu in trouble on Xeria to save my own valuable person. Luckily I had a fair supply of various hormones with me. This particular one, as the merest child should know, bypasses the need for cross-pollination. Through a law of biology the results will always be seedless fruit. Ask any horticulturist. It’s done all the time.”
“Seedless fruit—” Ramsay said blankly. “Cross-pollin—och, aye! Weel, I’ll be dommed.”
A MODEST disclaimer was no doubt on Macduff’s lips, but his eye was caught by the two comedians and he paused, cigar lifted, regarding them. The shorter of the two was now strutting in a wide circle, gesturing like one who smokes a cigar with great self-importance. His companion whooped wildly and beat him over the head.
“Tell me this, brother!” he cried in a shrill falsetto. “Who was that penguin I seen you with last night?”
“That wasn’t no penguin,” the strutter giggled happily. “That was a Venusian!” Simultaneously he gestured, and a spotlight sprang like a tent over Macduff’s shrinking head.
“What! What? How dare your screamed the outraged Macduff, recovering his voice at last amid ripples of laughter. “Libellous defamation of—of—I’ve never been so insulted in my life!” A repressed snort came from the Captain. The ruffled Macduff glared around furiously, rose to his full height and seized Ao’s hand.
“Ignore them,” Ramsay suggested in an unsteady voice. “After all, ye canna deny ye’re Venusian by species, Macduff, even though ye insist ye were hatched in Glasga’—Borm, I mean. Aye, ye’re Scots by birth and humanoid by classification, are ye na? And no more a penguin than I’m a monkey.”
But Macduff was already marching toward the door. Ao trailed obediently after, casting back angelic looks at the Lesser Vegan male.
“Outrageous!” said Macduff.
“Come back, mon,” Ramsay called, suppressing a wild whoop. “Remember the abstract art of impairsonation. ’Tis a mere matter of semantics—”
His voice went unheard. Macduff’s hack was an indignant ramrod. Towing Ao, his bottle-shaped figure stiff with dignity, Terence Lao-T’se Macduff vanished irrevocably into the Lesser Vegan night, muttering low.
For Macduff, as should be evident by now to the meanest intellect,[5] was not all he claimed to be . . .
“Tush,” said Captain Ramsay, his face split by a grin, “that I should ha’ seen the day! Waiter! A whusky-and-soda—no more of this nosty champagne. I am celebrating a red-letter occasion, a phenomenon of nature. D’ye ken this is probably the first time in Macduff’s life that the unprincipled scoundrel has taken his departure withoot leaving some puir swindled sucker behind?
“D’ye—eh? What’s that? What bill, ye daft loon? Pah, it was Macduff who insisted I be his guest tonight. Och, I—ah—eh—
“Dom!”
[1] An approximation. The actual name is unspellable.
[2] As a result of having sold them the Earth.
[3] The inhabitants of Ceres were long supposed to be invisible. Lately it has been discovered that Ceres has no inhabitants.
[4] With suction cups, of course.
[5] By which we mean the reader who skipped all the science, elementary as it was, in this chronicle.
EARTH’S LAST CITADEL
(1950 version)
At the dying Earth’s flaming Source of Power, Alan Drake pitted puny human strength against the all-consuming Alien’s irresistible might—in lost mankind’s last struggle for survival . . .
PROLOGUE
BEHIND the low ridge of rock to the north was the Mediterranean. Alan Drake could hear it and smell it. The bitter chill of the North African night cut through his torn uniform, but sporadic flares of whiteness from the sea battle seemed to give him warmth, somehow. Out there the big guns were blasting, the battlewagons thundering their fury.
This was it.
And he wasn’t in it—not this time. His job was to bring Sir Colin safely out of the Tunisian desert. That, it seemed, was important.
Squatting in the cold sand, Alan ignored the Scots scientist huddled beside him, to stare at the ridge as though his gaze could hurdle its summit and leap out to where the ships were fighting. Behind him, from the south, came the deep echoing noise of heavy artillery. That, he knew, was one jaw of the trap that was closing on him. The tides of war changed so swiftly—there was nothing for them now but heading blindly for the Mediterranean and safety.
He had got Sir Colin out of one Nazi trap already, two breathless days ago. But Colin Douglas was too valuable a man for either side to forget easily. And the Nazis would be following. They were between the lines now, lost, trying desperately to reach safety and stay hidden.
Somewhere in the night sky a nearing plane droned high. Moonlight glinted on Drake’s smooth blond head as he leaped for the shadow of a dune, signaling Sir Colin fiercely. Drake crouched askew, favoring his left side where a bullet gouge ran aslant up one powerful forearm and disappeared under his tom sleeve. He’d got that two nights ago in the Nazi raid, when he snatched Sir Colin away barely in time.
Army Intelligence meant such work, very often. Drake was a good man for his job, which was dangerous. A glance at his tight-lipped poker-face would have told that. It was a face of curious contrasts. Opponents were at a loss trying to gauge his character by one contradictory feature or the other; more often than not they guessed wrong.
The plane’s droning roar was very near now. It shook the whole sky with a canopy of sound. Sir Colin said impersonally, huddled against the dune:
“That meteor we saw last night—must have fallen near here, eh?”
There were stories about Sir Colin. His mind was a great one, but until the war he had detested having to use it. Science was only his avocation. He preferred the pleasures which food and liquor and society supplied. A decadent Epicurus with an Einstein brain—strange combination. And yet his technical skill—he was a top-rank physicist—had been of enormous value to the Allies.
“Meteor?” Drake said. “I’m not worried about that. But the plane—” He glanced up futilely. The plane was drawing farther away. “If they spotted us . . .”
Sir Colin scratched himself shamelessly. “I could do with a plane now. There seem to be fleas in Tunisia—carnivorous sand-fleas, be damned to them.”
“You’d better worry about that plane—and what’s in it.”
Sir Colin glanced up thoughtfully. “What?”
“A dollar to a sand-flea it’s Karen Martin.”
“Oh.” Sir Colin grimaced. “Her again. Maybe this time we’ll meet.”
“She’s a bad egg, Sir Colin. If she’s really after us, we’re in for trouble.”
The big Scotsman grunted. “An Amazon, eh?”
“You’d be surprised. She’s damned clever. She and her sidekick draw good pay from the Nazis, and earn it, too. You know Mike Smith?”
“An American?” Sir Colin scratched again.
“Americanized German. He’s got a bad history, too. Racketeer, I think, until Repeal. When the Nazis got going, he headed back for Germany. Killing’s his profession, and their routine suits him. He and Karen make a really dangerous team.” The Scotsman got laboriously to his feet, looking after the vanished plane.
“Well,” he said, “if that was the team, they’ll be back.”
“And we’d better not be here.” Drake scrambled up, nursing his arm.
The Scotsman shrugged and jerked his thumb forward. Drake grinned. His blue eyes, almost black under the shadow of the full lids, held expressionless impassivity. Even when he smiled, as he did now, the eyes did not change.
“Come on,” he said.
The sand was cold; night made it pale as snow in the faint moonlight. Guns were still clamoring as the two men moved toward the ridge. Beyond it lay the Mediterranean and, perhaps, safety.
Beyond it lay—something else.
IN the cup that sloped down softly to the darkened sea was—a crater. A shimmering
glow lay half-burled In the up-splashed earth. Ovoid-shaped, that glow. Its mass was like a monstrous radiant coal in the dimness.
For a long moment the two men stood silent. Then, “Meteor?” Drake asked.
There was incredulity in the scientist’s voice. “It can’t be a meteor. They’re never that regular. The atmosphere heated it to incandescence, but see—the surface isn’t even pitted. It must be tougher than beryllium steel. If this weren’t war I’d almost think It was”—he brought out the words after a perceptible pause—“some kind of man-made ship from—”
Drake was conscious of a strange excitement. “You mean, more likely it’s some Axis super-tank?”
Sir Colin didn’t answer. Caution forgotten, he had started hastily down the slope. There was a faint droning in the air now. Drake could not be sure if it was a returning plane, or if it came from the great globe itself. He followed the Scotsman, but more warily.
It was very quiet here in the valley. Even the shore birds must have been frightened away. The sea-battle had moved eastward; only a breeze stirred through the sparse bushes with a murmur of leaves. A glow rippled and darkened and ran like flame over the red-hot metal above them when the wind played upon those smooth, high surfaces. The air still had an oddly scorched smell.
The night silence in the valley had been so deep that when Drake heard the first faint crackling in the scrubby desert brush he found that he had whirled, gun ready, without realizing it.
“Don’t shoot,” a girl’s light voice said from the darkness. “Weren’t you expecting me?”
Drake kept his pistol raised. There was an annoying coldness in the pit of his stomach. Sir Colin, he saw, from the corner of his eye, had stepped back into the dark.
“Karen Martin, isn’t it?” Drake said. And his skin crawled with the expectation of a bullet from the night shadows. It was Sir Colin they wanted alive, not himself.
A low laugh in the dark, and a slim, pale figure took shape in the wavering glow from the meteor. “Right. What luck, our meeting like this!”
Collected Fiction Page 704