The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  “But in any event, I will perform the formality. The mines are capably managed by the existing staff; the terrestrial interests are under the stewardship of Calmus Associates. I strongly advise against any changes or any new undertakings. If you are approached by anyone wanting money on any pretext whatever—refer him to me, and I will tick him off properly.”

  Offbold continued on these lines for a moment or two, while Dover, listening with half-closed eyes, swung his riding crop back and forth.

  Offbold finally shook hands and departed. Dover watched him out to his cab.

  “Bumbling old idiot…” He slapped at his boots. “He means well, no doubt.”

  Thornton Bray, chairman of the Board of Directors for Lunar Mines Cooperative, was a large man, florid and moist as half a watermelon. He had prominent eyes without lashes; his cheeks were smooth and plump as a baby’s buttocks. Tucking the signed agreement in his pocket he shook his head with a rueful smirk.

  “Yes sir, a chip off the old block. I’m afraid I overshot myself trying to out-deal you.”

  Dover let the smoke of an expensive cigar trickle from the corner of his mouth. He adopted a careless manner, as if to deprecate his victory over Bray and Lunar Mineral Cooperative.

  “Yes, sir,” went on Bray, “you’re a big man now. You’ll go down in history. First man holding title to an entire world. Think of it! Fifty-nine million square miles! Lord of all you survey!”

  Dover glanced to the three-foot globe of the moon on his desk. The surface was divided into irregular areas tinted in gray-blue and gray, distinguishing Moon Mines from the Lunar Mineral Cooperative.

  “Yes, she’ll be all one color now. I wonder…” He paused. “I supposed it would hardly be in good taste.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Change the name from ‘Moon’ to ‘Spargill’.”

  Bray reflected. “You’d have your work cut out for you.” He shook hands, with a hearty jerking motion. “Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Spargill.” He gave his head an admiring shake. “Not that you need it, with that whipsaw brain of yours.”

  Dover gestured affably with his cigar. “I see a good thing, I go after it, I get it.”

  “Good-day then, Mr. Spargill.”

  Dover twitched his hand in a jaunty salute, turned back to the globe.

  A moment later the visiphone buzzed.

  Dover spoke over his shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Offbold, sir,” came the voice of his confidential secretary.

  Dover yawned, returned to his desk. “I’ll speak to him.”

  The screen revealed a face contorted by anger and desperation. “Quick,” cried Mr. Offbold, “you haven’t signed any papers, have you?”

  Dover put his feet on the desk, flicked the ash from his cigar. “I’ve just concluded an advantageous deal, if that’s what you mean. Very far-reaching.”

  Offbold’s face sagged. “Tell me the worst…”

  “Moon Mines Company now is legal owner to 59 million square miles, 42 billion cubic miles, 5 × 1019 tons of satellite. In short, we’ve bought out the Cooperative. I’m sole owner to the moon.”

  Offbold’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Tell me, what did you pay? How much?”

  “No small sum,” admitted Dover. “But I’ve been to the moon, I’ve seen the ore reserves on our land and on the Cooperative land and I’ll tell you, Offbold, we’ve come out to the good.”

  “How much?”

  “Oh—” Dover puffed hard at his cigar “—200 million cash.”

  Offbold put his hand to his forehead.

  “And the Antarctic Energy interest.”

  “Oh!”

  Dover inquired with asperity, “What’s the matter with you, Offbold?”

  Offbold heaved a deep sigh. “Now you own the moon, what are you going to do with it?”

  “Why, continue mining it, naturally.”

  “You young fool!” roared Offbold. “Don’t you ever read the papers?”

  “Certainly, whenever I have time.”

  “Well, take time now!” The screen went dark.

  “Miss Foresythe,” called Dover.

  “Yes, Mr. Spargill?”

  “The afternoon journal, if you please.”

  The screen glowed. Dover’s eyes went to the lead story.

  SCIENCE UNVEILS NEW BOMBSHELL

  TRANSMUTATION PROCESS

  ANNOUNCED

  A method for mass conversion of one element into another has been announced today by Frederick Dexter, chairman of the Applied Research Foundation. Eminent minds claim the discovery will bring about social changes comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

  Dexter made the historic announcement at a press conference this morning. “The device operates on a self-sustaining principle; that is to say, no outside energy is required, provided that a correct internal balancing according to established atomic theory is maintained. A condition equivalent to a temperature of hundreds of millions of degrees is used, but the energy produced—by either fusion or fission—is absorbed by the balancing process, and the cell remains at near-room temperature.”

  Dexter revealed that the Foundation itself will manufacture and distribute the transmutation units. Production will begin at once, Dexter announced, in sizes varying from household devices up to monsters capable of gulping many tons a minute.

  Dexter was asked as to the technological and economic effects of the discovery. “It is my opinion,” he said, “that we are entering a new Golden Age. Platinum will be as cheap as iron; we can now utilize the wastes and slag piles of the already antiquated chemical purification systems to obtain an abundance of pure materials. Mines of course will be—”

  Dover said politely, “You may turn off the screen, Miss Foresythe.”

  He walked slowly to the three-foot globe, caused it to spin, and the pocked surface rasped the palm of his hand. “59 million square miles,” mused Dover. “42 billion—”

  “Mr. Spargill,” came the voice of his secretary. “Mr. Offbold is back on the screen.”

  “Yes,” said Dover. “I’ll see him.”

  Mr. Offbold had himself under restraint; only the swelling of his neck betrayed the cost at which control had been achieved. He spoke in a labored voice, each word carefully enunciated.

  “Mr. Spargill, it is my duty to reveal to you the exact state of your affairs. First, Moon Mines is worth nothing. Nil. Your new acquisition, the Lunar Mineral Cooperative, is likewise valueless.”

  “But—I own the whole satellite!” protested Dover.

  Mr. Offbold’s eyes glittered, his lip curled tartly. “You could show title to the entire Magellanic Cloud, and it wouldn’t affect your bank credit a nickel’s worth.”

  Dover mulled over the situation.

  “You could not sell the entire moon for ten dollars,” barked Offbold. “No, excuse me, I take that back. No doubt there are spendthrift college boys who would offer you ten, perhaps twenty dollars, if only for the unique distinction of owning the moon. If you receive any such offers, I advise you to close; it is the only wise in which the moon has transactional value. So. We write off Moon Mines, Lunar Cooperative, and Antarctic Energy from your assets. Now—200 million dollars cash.

  “There is perhaps 70 or 80 million dollars fluid, in various depreciation, building, amortization funds, etcetera. I have made a rough calculation, and find that when you have sold other holdings sufficient to pay the balance you will have left—” he paused impressively “—the South Sahara Pest Control Agency at Timbuctoo, and a considerable acreage in North Arizona, both taken by your father in payment of otherwise uncollectible debts.”

  “Sell them both,” Dover directed him. “Sell everything. Pay all the bills and deposit the balance to my personal account.” He added in a brave voice, “Everything is turning out very well, just as I planned, in fact…”

  “I fail to understand you,” declared Offbold icily.

  Dover’s voice came hollowly. “Well, every once in a while a sha
king down is good for a great organization. Tones it up, so to speak…”

  Offbold lapsed into the vernacular. “You got shook down, Mr. Spargill, you got shook down.”

  Roger Lambro, during a mid-afternoon conversation with Miss Deborah Fowler on the Tivoli Terrace, asked, “Where in the world is Dover Spargill these days? Haven’t seen the chap in ages.”

  Miss Fowler absently shook her head. “He’s dropped out of the picture. I’ve heard rumors…” She stopped short, unwilling to pass on unpleasant gossip.

  Roger Lambro was not quite so delicate. “Oh?”

  She twirled the stem of her Martini glass. “Well—they say that after he pulled that ghastly floater, he went out to live on his property.” She raised her beautiful eyes to where the moon hung pale as an oyster in the afternoon sky. “Just think, Roger, perhaps he’s up there right now, looking down on us…”

  Thornton Bray stood on the marble plaza of his villa at Lake Maggiore, an after-dinner Armagnac in one hand, a Rosa Panatela Suprema in the other. He was entertaining a group of business associates with an anecdote of his business career.

  “—I might have been more charitable except this young ass, not dry behind the ears, thought all the time he was doing me. Me, Thornton Bray!” Bray laughed quietly. “Thought he was getting something for nothing. So I played him along; after all, business is business. He made the break, I followed through…Yes, sir, I wish I could have seen his face when he first felt the clinch.”

  “Speaking of the moon,” said one of his friends, “she certainly looks fine tonight. Can’t say as I’ve ever seen her looking quite so—well, calm, pearly.”

  Thornton Bray glanced up to the full moon. “Yes, she’s beautiful. From down here, that is. If you’ve ever mined up there, you come back to Earth with different ideas. A devilish place, bleak, arid.”

  “Funny color to it,” observed another member of the party. “Green and blue and pink, all at once.”

  Bray remonstrated playfully. “Come now, Jonesy. You’ve been dipping your beak more than is good for you…Have another? By Golly, I think I’ll join you.”

  Cornelius Armitage, professor of Astronomy at Hale University, muttered waspishly under his breath, wiped the eyepiece of the telescope with a bit of floss.

  A teaching assistant sat nearby counting stars in a sky-sample. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Steam in the lens, a frightful condition. The moon looks all fuzzy.” He inspected the glass. “There, that’s better.”

  He bent once more to his observations.

  The teaching assistant looked up at a new sound. Professor Armitage was sitting bolt upright, his eyeglasses on the table, rubbing his eyes, blinking. “I’ve been reading far too much; got to take it a little easier.”

  “All done for the night?” inquired the teaching assistant.

  Professor Armitage nodded wearily. “I’m just too tired and bleary-eyed.”

  Lieutenant MacLeod, overlooking a student’s work at the Maritime Institute, shook his head indulgently. “Those figures would set us three hundred miles inland. You’ve probably failed to correct for refraction.”

  Cadet Glasskamp set his lips rebelliously. The problem was futile in any event; celestial navigation was seldom used in this day of loran and automatic piloting. Lunar occultation of stars to determine Greenwich time was three centuries antiquated; the exercise was no more than drudgery.

  Lieutenant MacLeod admitted as much, but he claimed that working the difficult old systems clarified the primary concepts of hour angle, declination, right ascension, local time, and the like, as did none of the modern short-cut methods.

  Cadet Glasskamp bent over his problem. Twenty minutes later he looked up. “I can’t find anything wrong here. Might have been an error in the observation.”

  “Nonsense,” said the lieutenant. “I caught the sight myself.” Nevertheless he checked on Glasskamp’s figures, once, twice, a third time, and finally opening the Nautical Almanac, calculated the time of occultation.

  He chewed his lip in amazement. “Twenty-two minutes? I don’t believe it. That shot was right on the nose.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t allow for refraction of the star’s light around the moon.”

  Lieutenant MacLeod gave Cadet Glasskamp a pitying look. “Refraction occurs when light passes through an atmosphere. There’s no atmosphere on the moon—although if there were—” he calculated under his breath “—the moon moves half a degree an hour, that’s thirty minutes. Earth atmosphere refracts a thousand seconds; if there were an atmosphere dense as Earth’s on the moon, you’d have to double it, light passing through twice. Two thousand. Say twelve hundred—that’s twenty minutes. If so—that would create forty chronological minutes, at half a degree per hour. Apparently,” said the lieutenant jocularly, “we’ve discovered that the moon has an atmosphere roughly half as dense as the Earth’s.”

  Sunday morning breakfast in the home of Sir Brampton Pasmore moved along its usual lazy routine. Sir Brampton read a favorite technical journal with his kippers; Lady Iris scanned the Times Magazine.

  Lady Iris uttered an amused exclamation. “Here’s something in your field, my dear.” She read. “‘Does the Moon Have an Atmosphere? Strange Signs and Portents’.”

  “Pooh,” scoffed Sir Brampton. “I marvel at the Times for publishing that yellow sensational balderdash. Expect that stuff from the Americans…”

  Lady Iris knitted her brows. “They seem perfectly serious. They speak of meteor trails appearing.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Sir Brampton, returning to his paper. “It hasn’t been ten years since the moon was extensively explored for minerals, before transmuters, of course. There certainly was no atmosphere then; why should there be now?”

  Lady Iris shook her head doubtfully. “Couldn’t someone give the moon an atmosphere?”

  “Impractical, my dear,” Sir Brampton murmured.

  “I don’t see why.”

  Sir Brampton laid aside his paper. “It’s a scientific matter, dear, that I’m not sure you’d understand.”

  Lady Iris bridled sharply. “Are you by any chance suggesting—”

  “No, naturally not,” Sir Brampton said hurriedly. “What I meant was…Oh, well, it’s a matter of escape velocity of a celestial body, and the molecular motion of gases. Lunar gravity is insufficiently powerful to retain an atmosphere, at least for any length of time: the molecules move at sufficient speed to escape into space. Hydrogen would whiff off at once. Oxygen and nitrogen—well, I believe they’d probably last longer, perhaps years, but eventually they’d escape. So you see, an atmosphere on the moon just isn’t practical.”

  Lady Iris tapped her paper with a stubborn finger. “It says in the Times there’s an atmosphere. That means it’s there. The Times is never wrong. Why doesn’t somebody drop by and find out for sure?”

  Sir Brampton sighed. “The moon doesn’t interest anyone any more, my dear. Martian ruins are the current excitement. The moon is uncomfortable and dangerous, there’s nothing to be learned, and now that transmutation supplies all our mineral wants, there’s no reason whatever to visit the moon…Besides, I understand that some crank with legal title discourages trespassing; he has a special patrol that turns back visitors.”

  “Well, well, well,” breathed lovely Deborah Fowler Lambro to her husband Roger. “Remember Dover Spargill? Just look at this!”

  She handed across the bulletin from the news-facsimile.

  “Moon being readied for habitation, announces Dover Spargill, owner of the moon…”

  Lady Iris looked at Sir Brampton with glowing eyes. “I told you so,” said she, and Sir Brampton crouched behind the Report of the Royal Astrophysical Society.

  Thornton Bray walked back and forth, hands behind his back. Was it possible…No, of course not. And yet…Dover Spargill had been so innocent a sheep, so succulent for the plucking.

  He reached for the visiphone, dialled his attorney. “Herman, remember when we first
organized the Lunar Cooperative?”

  “All of twenty-five years ago,” mused Herman Birch, a tall lemon-colored man with the flat-topped face of a falcon.

  “There was an old duffer, dead now, who refused to sign up. He only held a few square miles, in Aristillus crater, I believe. When we sold Lunar Co-op to Spargill, that particular parcel was not included. I wonder what the status of that claim is now?”

  Birch turned his head, spoke a few words to someone out of the range of vision, returned to Bray. “What do you make of this atmosphere talk?”

  Bray curled his lips. “Eyewash. Where would it come from? Moon surface is a thirteenth of Earth surface; there’d be billions and billions of tons.”

  “Spargill might be using transmuters.”

  “Suppose he is? Do you have any conception of the size of a project like that? The moon’s a big place. The heaviest transmuter I know of has a capacity of a hundred tons a minute and that’s chicken feed.”

  “He might have built special installations.”

  “Where would he get the money? I know on reliable information that he was cleaned out when he took over Lunar Co-op…Just a minute, I’ll call the Applied Research Foundation and make some inquiries.”

  He dialled rapidly, and a moment later was looking into a cautious round face. “Hello, Sam.”

  Sam Abbott nodded. “What can I do for you, Bray?”

  “I want a little confidential information, Sam.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Has Applied Research sold Dover Spargill any transmuters?”

  Sam Abbott’s face crinkled in a sudden broad grin. “I’ll give you a straight answer, Bray: not a one. Not a single one.”

  Bray blinked. “How do you account for the talk of an atmosphere on the moon?”

  Abbott shrugged. “I don’t account for it; that’s not my job.”

  Bray, muttering in irritation, returned to Herman Birch. Birch nodded a wise head. “That claim was open. I’ve just filed in your name.”

  Bray clamped his heavy mouth. “Good. Now I’ve got a legal right to visit my claim. Rent me a fast boat…”