The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  Captain Badt clenched and unclenched his hands. “Very well. Go ahead.” He turned his back, stared into the blank magniscreen. This would be his last voyage.

  With the help of Henry, the ship’s electrician, Dart built the frame, strung it with wire, equipped it with a high-potential battery. Strapping himself into the ’copter harness, he rose straight up, dangling a mile of light cable. He became a speck on the gray-blue sky.

  “That’s it,” said Henry into the communication mike. “Now I’ll make fast this fly trap affair, and then—I’ve got another idea. We want the thing to move flat-side forward, so I’ll tie on a bridle with a bit of drag at the end.”

  He arranged the drag, snapped the switch on the battery. “She’s ready to go.”

  A mile above, Dart moved across the sky toward the ledge of pitchblende.

  Captain Badt maintained an iron grip on the hand rail in the bridge, watching Dart’s progress on the magniscreen. “Up, Dart,” he said.

  “Up four feet…There…Steady. That’s about right. Take it slow…”

  * * *

  The unigen’s range of perception included the lowest radio waves as well as the hottest ultra-cosmics, a spectrum of a million colors. Stereoscopic vision was implicit in the fact that each node served as an organ of sight. Resolution of images was achieved by accepting only radiation normal to the surface of the node. In this manner a coarse spherical picture was received by each node, although detail as fine as the frame strung with wire was nearly invisible.

  The unigen’s first warning was a pressure from the approaching electrostatic fields; then the frame swept across the ledge, full through the heaviest concentration of nodes.

  The blast seared the ground, melted it into a flaming molten basin for a radius of fifty feet. The nodes which escaped the screen were flung pell-mell by the explosion out across the ocean.

  Directly under the explosion, the spike-vegetation was scorched; elsewhere, little affected.

  The structure of the unigen was no more capable of anger than pleasure; however, its will to survive was intense. Overhead flew the land-worm. One like it had destroyed a node through electricity; perhaps this one was somehow associated with the last catastrophic explosion. Four nodes slanted up at light speed, snapped back and forth through the land-worm like sewing-machine needles hemming a sheet. The creature fell to the ground.

  The unigen assembled its nodes a hundred feet over the bank of uranium. Ninety-six nodes destroyed.

  The unigen weighed the situation. The planet was rich with uranium, but it was also the home of lethal land-worms.

  The unigen decided. There was uranium elsewhere in the universe, on thousands of worlds that were silent and dark and free of any kind of life. A lesson had been learned: avoid worlds inhabited by life-forms, no matter how primitive.

  The nodes flashed off into the sky, dispersed into space.

  * * *

  Captain Badt relaxed his grip on the table. “That’s it,” he said in a flat voice. “Any world where we lose four good men in four hours—any world inhabited by swarms of crazy atomic bees—that’s no world for human beings. Four good men…”

  He stood silent a moment, limp and dejected.

  The cadet wandered into the bridge, stared wide-eyed. Life-long habit reasserted itself. Captain Badt filled out, became erect, rigid. His tunic and trousers hung crisp, his eyes once more shone with authority.

  “Ensign, you will act as chief officer until further notice. We’re leaving the planet, returning to Earth. Please attend to all exterior ports.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the new Chief Mate.

  * * *

  The planet was quiet. The ocean spread bright and green, the mountains rolled back into the badlands: crags, ravines, plateaus—black rock, gray rock, pockets of drifted ash.

  On the pitchblende ledge the vegetation waxed tall, five, ten, twenty feet, gray spines mottled with white, ivory, silver. In each a central vein opened; the spike became a tube straight and stiff as a cannon barrel.

  At the bottom of the tube, the fruit of the plant began to develop. There was a spore-case, enclosed by a jacket into which water percolated. Below the spore-case opened another compartment, globe-shaped, communicating with the base of the spike by four splayed channels.

  A nub of uranium 235 accumulated in this chamber—one ounce, two ounces, three ounces, more and more diffused through the membranes of the plant by some evolutionary freak of a metabolism.

  The fruit was ripe. One by one, the spikes reached a culmination. A tension within the water-jacket increased past the breaking strain. The jacket split, flooded the compartment below the spore-case, surrounded the knob of uranium.

  Explosion. Steam bursting through the stern-pointing channels, back into the tube. Thrust, straight up. Sharp whipping blasts as the cases left the spikes. Up, up, up, at furious acceleration, into space…

  The water dissipated, the last puff of steam left the tubes. The spore-cases floated free on momentum. The gravitational field of the planet faded to a wisp, a film. The spore-cases drifted on. Now they cooled, cracked wide. From each a thousand capsules spilled into space, and the tiny jerk of the splitting case sent them in courses slightly divergent, enough to scatter them off toward different stars.

  Endless seeping of life across space.

  Smite into planet, the sift of spores, the search for the hot element, the growth, the culmination, the blast, the impulse.

  Then space, years of drift. Out beyond, and past beyond…

  The Uninhibited Robot

  I

  The bartender was the biggest man at the Hub. He had a red slab-sided face, chest and belly like a barrel of meat and bone. He bounced his drunks by butting them to the door with this same belly, dancing close, thrusting forward like an uncouth and elephantine cooch-dancer. Reliable information compared the blow to the kick of a mule. Marvin Allixter, nervously lean and on his way to forty, wanted to call him a blackguard, a double-dealing pinch-penny, but cautiously restrained his tongue.

  The bartender twisted the bubble back and forth, inspecting the enclosed little creature from all sides. It glowed and glinted like a prism—sun yellow, emerald, melting mauve, bright pink—the purest of colors. “Twenty franks,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Twenty franks?” Allixter dramatically beat both fists against the bar. “Now you’re joking.”

  “No joke,” rumbled the bartender.

  Allixter leaned forward earnestly, thinking to appeal to the man’s reason. “Now, Buck, look here. The bubble is pure rock crystal, maybe a million years old. And mind you the Kickerjees dig a year and think themselves lucky to find one or two, and then only in a great chunk of quartz. They grind and polish and twist and turn and then one slip—smash!—the bubble breaks, the mite oozes out and dies.”

  The bartender turned away to pour straight shots for a pair of grinning warehousemen. “Too fragile. If I bought it and one of these drunks busted it I’d be out of twenty franks.”

  “Twenty franks?” Allixter asked in astonishment. “That’s no figure to mention in the same breath with this little jewel. Why, I’d sell my ear for twenty franks first.”

  “Suits me.” Buck the bartender jocularly flourished a knife.

  Allixter now thought to arouse the man’s cupidity. “This item cost me five hundred franks at the source.”

  The bartender laughed in his face. “You guys on the tube gang all sing the same song. You pick up a trinket somewhere off in the stations, you smuggle it back through the tube, you spin a fancy yarn about how much it cost you and hustle the item to the first sucker who listens to you.” He drew himself a small glass of water, drank it with a wink to the warehousemen.

  “Sure, I got stuck once. I bought a little varmint from Hank Evans, said it could dance, said it knew all the native dances of Kalong, and the thing looked like it could dance. I put down forty-two franks for the animal. Come to find it had sore feet in the new gravity and was just hoppi
ng from one to the other to ease the pain. That was the dancing.”

  Allixter shifted uneasily, glanced over his shoulder to the door. Sam Schmitz, the dispatcher, had been buzzing him for an hour and Sam was an impatient man. He lounged back against the bar, attempting an air of nonchalance. “Look at the colors the little rascal goes through—there! That red! Ever see anything so bright? Think how that would look hung around some lady’s neck!”

  Kitty, the sumptuous blonde hostess, said in a breathless contralto, “I think it’s lovely. I’d be proud to wear it myself.”

  The bartender took up the bubble once more. “I don’t know no ladies.” He inspected it doubtfully. “It’s a pretty little trinket. Well, maybe I’ll spring twenty franks.”

  The screen at his back buzzed. He turned on audio and duovision together without first waiting for the caller’s identification, then took his bulk to the side. Allixter had no time to duck. Sam Schmitz stared at him eye to eye.

  “Allixter!” barked Schmitz. “You’ve got five minutes to report. After that, don’t bother!” The screen went blank.

  Allixter stared under thoughtful dark eyebrows at the bartender, who regarded him placidly. “Since you’re in a hurry,” said Buck, “I’ll make it twenty-five franks. It’s a cute little bobbet.”

  Allixter rose to his feet, still staring at the bartender. He juggled the bubble from hand to hand. Buck reached out in alarm. “Easy—the thing might break.” He dived into the till. “Here’s your twenty-five franks.”

  Allixter said, “Five hundred.”

  “Can’t do it,” said the barkeep.

  “Make it four hundred.”

  Buck shook his head, watching Allixter from craftily narrowed eyes. Allixter turned, wordlessly walked from the bar. The bartender waited like a statue. Allixter’s long dark face returned through the door. “Three hundred.”

  “Twenty-five franks.”

  Allixter screwed his face into an expression of agony and departed.

  In the street he paused. The depot, a big cube of a building, rose like a cliff in the wintry sunlight, dominating the rather disreputable purlieus of the Hub. At its base spread warehouses, glittering aluminum banks, each a quarter-mile long. Trucks and trailers nuzzled at side-bays like red-and-blue leeches.

  The warehouse roofs served as cargo decks where flexible loaders crammed airship holds with produce from a hundred worlds. Allixter watched the activity a moment, conscious that, for all the activity, nine tenths of the traffic passed unseen along the tubes—to continental Earth stations, to stations among the planets, among the stars.

  “Rats!” said Allixter. He walked without haste to the corner transit, considering the little bubble. Perhaps he should have sold—twenty-five franks was twenty-four franks profit. He rejected the idea. A man was able to carry only so much along the tubes and expected a decent profit from his enterprise.

  The bubble actually was a kind of sea-creature washed up on the pink beaches of—Allixter couldn’t remember the name of the planet—9-3-2 was the code to the station. He tucked it away in his pouch, climbed into the shell at the transit, swerved, rose, popped out into light. Allixter stepped out upon the depot administration deck.

  A few feet distant was the glass-enclosed cubicle where Sam Schmitz, the Service Foreman and Dispatcher, sat on a high stool. Allixter slid back a pane, said, “Hello, Sam,” in a kind voice. Schmitz had a round pudgy face, fierce and red. He had the undershot chin and general expression of a bulldog.

  “Allixter,” said Schmitz, “you’ll be surprised. We’re tightening up around here. You guys on the repair crew have picked up the idea that you’re a bunch of aristocrats, responsible only to God. This is a mistake. You were due on standby three hours ago. For two hours the Chief’s been chewing my rear end for a mechanic. I find you in Buck’s bar. I want to be good to you guys but you’ve got to follow through.”

  Allixter listened without concentration, nodding at the right places. Where next to peddle the bubble? Maybe wait till he got a week’s leave, take it down to Edmonton or Chicago. Or better yet, stash it away till he had accumulated a few other items and then make Paris or Mexico City, where the big money was. Schmitz paused for breath.

  “Anything on the docket, Sam?” Allixter asked.

  The response startled him. Sam’s chin quivered in rage. “Blast it! What do you think I’ve been talking about the last five minutes?”

  Allixter desperately sent his mind back, recalling a phrase here, a sentence there. He rubbed his thin cheek and jaw, and said, “I didn’t quite catch all of it, Sam. Maybe if you’d go over it again…Just what’s the complaint?”

  Sam flung up his arms in disgust. “Go see the Chief. He’ll give you the picture. I’m done.”

  Allixter crossed the deck, turned down a hall, stopped at a tall green door with bronze letters which read: SERVICE AND MAINTENANCE DIRECTOR. ENTER.

  He pushed the button. The door slotted and he entered the outer office. The secretary glanced up. Allixter said, “The Chief’s expecting me.”

  “That’s no secret.” Then she said into the mesh, “Scotty Allixter’s here.” She listened to her ear-plug, nodded at Allixter, keyed back the lock on the inner door. He slid it aside, stepped into the office. The air, as always, had a harsh medicinal odor which irritated Allixter’s nose.

  The Chief was a small man, built to an angular design. His skin was wrinkled and yellow, parched like an old lemon. His eyes were small black balls, snapping with some kind of inner electricity. A few wisps of kinky hair rose from his head, some white, some black, without apparent design. The skin of his neck was corrugated like an alligator’s and the right side was marred all the way to his knobby chin by a heavy welt of scar tissue. Allixter had never seen the Chief laugh, had never heard him speak other than in a dry monotonous twang.

  The Chief said without preliminaries, “Schmitz probably gave you the picture on this job.”

  Allixter took a seat. “To be frank, Chief, I didn’t quite get it.”

  The Chief spoke as if he were explaining table manners to an idiot—softly, with careful enunciations. “You’ve been through to Rhetus Station?”

  “Code six minus four minus nine. Sure thing. They’ve got a new Mammoth installation.”

  “Well, six minus four minus nine is coming in out of phase.”

  Allixter’s thick straight eyebrows rose in an arch. “So soon? Why, we just—”

  The Chief said drily, “Here’s the story. The tube came in, just barely scraping over the bitter edge of the tuner. I computed thirty-one-hundredths-of-a-percent slack in the phase.”

  Allixter scratched his chin. “Sounds as if there’s a leak in the selector unit.”

  “Possibly,” agreed the Chief.

  “Or maybe they’ve got a new dispatcher and he’s playing with the adjustments.”

  The Chief said, “To make sure we hit the unit dead-center I’m sending you out on six minus four minus nine, slacked down the same percentage that it came in.”

  Allixter winced. “That sounds dangerous. If the code doesn’t sock home in the contacts I’ll come out something pretty poor on Rhetus.”

  The Chief pushed himself back in his chair. “Job for a service man. You’re on standby. So it’s yours.”

  Allixter frowningly looked through the window, across the misty reaches of the Great Slave Lake. “There’s something fishy here. That’s a new Mammoth and they work close.”

  “True.”

  Allixter shot a narrow glance at the Chief. “Sure it was Rhetus?”

  “I never said it was in the first place. I said the code was six minus four minus nine.”

  “Got a picture of that code?”

  The Chief wordlessly tossed him an oscillograph pattern.

  Allixter said, “Amplitude six, frequencies four and nine.” He frowned. “Almost six, almost four and nine. Not quite. Close enough to sock into the contacts.”

  “Correct. Well, get your gear, climb through the
tube, service that installation.”

  Allixter anxiously pulled at his wedge-shaped Gaelic chin. “Maybe…” He paused.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “No.”

  “Looks like it might be an amateur station or a hijacking outfit. The Rhetus tube runs valuable cargo. Now if some outfit could divert the tube to their own station…”

  “If you think so, you can take a gun with you.”

  Allixter rubbed his hands together nervously. “Sounds like a police job to me, Chief.”

  The Chief raked him with his snapping black eyes. “It sounds to me as if the code is thirty-one-hundredths-of-a-percent slack. Maybe some silly bloke is punching wrong buttons on that Mammoth. I want you to go straighten it out. What do you think you’re drawing a thousand franks a month for?”

  Allixter muttered something about the infinite value of human life. The Chief said, “If you don’t like it I know better mechanics than you who will.”

  “I like it,” said Allixter.

  “Wear Type X.”

  Allixter’s thick black eyebrows became question marks. “Rhetus has a good atmosphere. Type X is anti-halogen—”

  “Wear Type X. We’re not taking unnecessary chances. Suppose it is a hijack installation? Take along the Linguaid too. And a gun.”

  “I see we’re of the same mind,” said Allixter.

  “Don’t forget spare power and check your breather unit. Evans reported a leaky tube on the extra unit. I had it condemned but maybe they’re all that way.”

  II

  The mechanics’ locker room was deserted. In glum silence Allixter pulled on the Type X—first a thick neck-to-toe coverall webbed with heating elements, then a thin sheath of inert film to seal him from a possibly dangerous atmosphere, then high boots of woven metal and silicone impervious to heat, cold, dampness and mechanical damage. A belt strapped around his waist and over his shoulder supported his tool kit, a breather and humidity-control unit, two fresh power packs, a sheath knife, a JAR, and a heat-torch.