The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

Smith aimed the gun at Plum. Plum dodged and fell. Smith caught movement from the corner of his eye—Jack Fetch. Rapidly he backed into the clutter of rock. Captain Plum lay quiet. Jack Fetch showed himself cautiously. Smith raised his arm. Fetch saw the motion, and as Smith pulled the trigger he fell to the ground. The nose of the gun sputtered, melted to a blob of metal. The crystal had broken when Plum fell.

  Fetch came crouching, sidling forward, and Smith retreated behind the rocks.

  Plum roared, “Don’t shoot him; let him be. Shooting’s too fast for the skunk. He likes the place so much, he can make his home here, for a few hours anyway.” Irrationally he raised his voice. “Smith, you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you.”

  “You show your face, we’ll shoot it off; we’ll be watching for you. You’re on your own now, snooper. You take it from here.”

  V

  From a crevice between crags of black sulfur, Smith watched the men march up the hill. He glanced at the oxygen indicator. Six hours.

  Cautiously he rose to his feet, looked back toward the Dog. The port was still locked and impregnable.

  He watched the crew march up over the rise, looming on the sky. He had one chance: ambush one of them, get his gun, kill the others. One chance—dangerous, desperate, bloody.

  He scrambled swiftly up the slope and peered over the ridge. There were no men in his immediate range of vision. But there were the castles—six great blocks sixty feet high, built of a dull tufa-like substance.

  Smith circled to the right, around the ridge. He climbed a mound of granular stuff, like lemon-yellow sugar, and slid down the other side.

  He caught a glimpse of Bones a quarter of a mile distant. No good—Bones was out in the open, and in any event Bones carried no gun. It had to be Plum, Jack Fetch, or one of the engine-room gang.

  He dialed his radio up the band. A loud crackling told him he was near a fuzz-ball. There it was, a hundred feet distant. Smith watched it, fascinated. If it responded to the random noise he made, was he to assume that it had no mind of its own? If so, who or what guided it? What was its purpose?

  Smith cautiously approached the creature. It moved over the ground, and now Smith saw that from its underside hung a tube which swept over the ground. When it passed over one of the yellow flakes that sprinkled the ground, it jerked, and the flake was gone.

  Smith reached for one of the flakes. It came free of the ground with a trace of resistance; Smith saw a trailing mesh of dependent fibrils—a small sulfurous plant. The fuzz-balls walked abroad, gathering little bits of Rho Ophiuchus vegetables. For their own consumption?

  Smith surveyed the valley. From where he stood, an easy way led down the hill, across a saddle, up a kind of rough ramp to the lip of the nearest castle, which was perhaps two hundred yards distant. Smith descended slowly into the saddle; and here the crew of the Dog came into view.

  Down the valley they strode, along a rude road. They were busy. From time to time Smith saw the glitter of knife, the quick flash of green, the suddenly brittle mass toppling to the side.

  Smith ran up the ramp to the top of the castle, watching the five men over his shoulder. His hand strayed toward the radio dial. Why not apologize to Captain Plum, ask to be given back his life? Surely something so precious was worth the humiliation. Smith shuddered. In his mind he saw Plum’s gloating, blood-charged face, saw the lips twisting in a grin. There would be no mercy from Plum. Better a desperate ambush, or perhaps a boulder of glassy brown sulfur rolled down one of the slopes.

  The castle beside him was full of turgid brown liquid. Water? Acid? It was more than ever like a tank from his present vantage point. The liquid boiled and swirled as he looked.

  Down in the flat, Plum, Bones, Jack Fetch and the two engineers were proceeding along the crude road, overtaking and killing fuzz-balls which were strung out along the road about a hundred feet apart.

  Something brushed Smith’s legs; he started, swung around. A fuzz-ball wandered past him, lax as a somnambulist, and stopped beside the liquid. The surface boiled; a great arm rose up, wound around the fuzz-ball, lifted it, and dragged it under the surface. Smith stood transfixed, too startled to move. He backed slowly to the ramp.

  On another ramp across the hollow suddenly appeared black forms: Jack Fetch, Bones, the two engineers. Where was Captain Plum?

  Smith saw him by the foot of the castle, looking up. Tuning into the communication band, he heard Fetch’s voice. “Nothing up here, Cap—just dirty water. Some kind of cistern or blow-hole.”

  Plum roared back, “Don’t you see no fuzzies? That’s where they seem to live; there ought to be a whole swarm of them inside. Come on back down; let’s split one of these castles open, see what’s—”

  A huge pale shape rose in the tank, four arms wrapped around the four men. Frantically, unbelievingly, they fought; Smith saw their desperate shapes black on the yellow sky. They tottered; the arms jerked them into the liquid. For a second or two the communication channel rang with their agony.

  Then came Plum’s bellow. “What’s going on, what’s—” his voice died suddenly, and a black silence followed.

  Smith stumbled blindly down the ramp, away from the tank. These were terrible things, a terrible world. He paused, peering around the crumbling tufa. His sight misted and blurred through the sulfurous atmosphere; it was as if he were trying to peer into a dream. He saw Plum, standing silent, as if thinking.

  Smith looked at his oxygen gauge. At normal respiration, he had four hours of life. He valved it as low as possible, tried to breathe shallowly, moved with the utmost efficiency.

  Suddenly he knew how to deal with Captain Plum.

  Plum turned, searched the landscape. Smith saw that he carried only a knife.

  Smith slowly descended the slope, making no attempt to avoid discovery. Plum turned his head sharply and hefted his knife. Smith said mildly, “Do you think the knife will help you, Plum?” He picked up a cubical chunk of pyrite, heavy, compact, and continued slowly down the slope. It occurred to him that he was breathing hard; he saw that Plum was panting. He forced himself to breathe shallowly, to control his slightest unnecessary movement.

  Plum said in a guttural voice, “Keep away from me, if you value your health.”

  “Plum,” said Smith, “you’re on your last lap, whether you know it or not.”

  “Says you.”

  Smith spoke in a half-whisper, with power turned high on his transmitter. Spend the power, save the oxygen. Keep Plum talking, the longer the better. “I was green when you dragged me aboard your ship. I’m not green now.”

  Plum cursed him in a thick voice. Excellent, thought Smith; anger increased the rate of his respiration. “I’ve seen gorillas as fat as you are,” said Smith, “but none so ugly.”

  Plum’s face burnt brick-color; he took a step toward Smith. Smith flung the pyrite; it struck Plum’s head-dome, jarring him. Plum said, “I’m going to cut you open, Smith.”

  “Lumbering ape,” said Smith. “You’ll have to catch me first.”

  Plum lurched forward, and Smith retreated uphill. Plum weighed two hundred sixty pounds, Smith weighed one-seventy. Plum carried another twenty pounds slung over his back—knapsack and jewels.

  Smith, keeping a few feet ahead of Plum, evading Plum’s sudden dashes forward by virtue of his agility, led Plum ever away from the Dog.

  Plum stopped short. “You think you’re going to get me up on top of that rim,” he panted. “Think again, Smith. I don’t know what happened up there, but I’m not gonna let it stop me.”

  “I saw what happened. I saw the whole thing. It worked out just as I told you it would.”

  “Don’t try to play me for a sucker, Smith.”

  “You’ve been played for a sucker, Plum, but not by me. By whatever it is that lives inside the tanks.”

  Plum laughed jeeringly, slapped his knapsack. “I’ve got about thirty of those jewels right here. If that’s what you call being played for a sucker—”

/>   “Those aren’t jewels. They’re beautiful little radio receivers—better than anything we have on Earth. That’s what I meant when I told you that there were things for us to learn here.”

  Plum’s eyes narrowed. “How did you figure that?”

  “If I’m right,” said Smith, “the fuzz-balls that you’ve been chasing up and down the planet aren’t essentially living creatures.” Plum was craftily edging forward, his knife concealed behind him. Let him come. Let him make a rush. “They act more like machines—half-living robots, if you want to use the word, designed to gather food for the tank builders.”

  Plum, taken momentarily aback, blinked. “That’s silly. Machinery don’t look like that. Them things is alive.”

  Smith laughed. “Plum, you’re not only unpleasant; you’re stupid.”

  “Yeah?” said Plum softly, creeping a step closer.

  “All you know is what you’ve seen on Earth—metal, glass, and wire. There’s no metal here, just sulfur. They use sulfur in ways we’ve never conceived—something else Earth scientists would like to know. Sulfur, oxygen, hydrogen, traces of this and that. They make their machines differently than we make ours, perhaps breed them out of their own bodies. So if it’s any pleasure to you, you’re not a murderer—you’re a saboteur. You’ve been wrecking machines and stealing the spark plugs. You’ve been a damned nuisance, and the people here set a trap for you. Got four out of five. Good hunting, I should—” Plum lunged forward. Instead of dodging, Smith charged forward and hit Plum with his body crouched.

  Off balance, Plum clutched at him; they went down together. Plum brought his knife into play, trying to pierce the tough fabric of the space-suit. Smith ignored him, groped for Plum’s oxygen hose. He caught it, yanked it loose.

  Oxygen spewed out at a tremendous pressure, flapping the hose wildly. Plum cried out crazily, dropped the knife, caught the hose, kinked it, fitted it back over the nipple. Smith picked up the knife, threw it far out into the boulders.

  Plum was coughing; some of the atmosphere had been carried into his head-dome.

  Smith stood back, grinning. “Plum, you’re as good as dead. I’ve got you where I want you.”

  Plum looked up, his eyes watering. “How do you figure, you got me? All I have to do is go back to the ship, take off, leave you waving good-bye with your handkerchief.”

  “How much oxygen you got left?”

  “I got plenty. Two hours.”

  “I’ve got four hours.” Smith let the idea sink in for a moment, then said softly, “I’m not going to let you go back to the ship. Three hours from now I’m going back—by myself.”

  Plum stared at him, then snorted in vast contempt. “How you gonna stop me?”

  “We might do a little fighting. Don’t forget, you’ve taught me a lot this trip.”

  “You think you can hold me off for two hours?”

  “I know damned well I can.”

  “Good enough. Go ahead, try it.” Plum backed warily down the slope. Smith came after him and stepped in close. Plum beat his fist on Smith’s head-dome, then brought up his knee, as Smith had expected. Smith grabbed the knee, jerked; Plum staggered, fell heavily on his face. Smith snatched at the oxygen tube. Oxygen thrashed out, flailing the tube back and forth. Feverishly Plum fitted it back in place, sat looking up at Smith with a strange, pale expression.

  Carefully he rose to his feet. “You keep away from me, young fellow. Next time I get you, I’ll bust your neck.”

  Smith laughed. “How much oxygen do you have left, Plum?”

  Plum glanced quickly, made no answer.

  “You’re lucky if there’s an hour’s worth. It’s half an hour to the ship. Still think you can make it? All I need to do is grab that tube just once more.”

  Plum said hoarsely, “Okay Smith, you win. You got me licked; I’m man enough to admit it. We’ll forget the bad blood, we’ll go back and there’ll be no more talk of anyone being left here.”

  Smith shook his head. “I wouldn’t trust you if you were Moses on a raft. That’s something else you taught me, Plum. In a way, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be responsible for anybody’s death, not even yours. But once aboard that ship, with you and Owen against me, two to one, how long would I last? Not very long.”

  “You got me wrong, Smith.”

  “No, Plum. One of us is going to stay here. You.”

  Plum rushed him. Smith backed away easily out of reach, leading Plum away from the ship. Plum pounded on, arms outstretched grotesquely, and Smith trotted ahead just out of reach.

  Plum halted, red-eyed, then turned and ran in the other direction, toward the ship.

  Smith brought him down with a tackle, and his hand found the oxygen tube. He hesitated. He could not pull it loose. It was too cold, too calculating, this slow stealing of a man’s breath.

  Only a moment. Revulsion or not, it was Plum’s life or his. He jerked. Plum thrashed wildly to his feet, fitted the hose back in place. His fingers were trembling. The hose had not flailed so hard.

  Motion entered Smith’s field of vision—something black and big. Unbelievingly, he stared. Plum rose to his feet, stared likewise; together they watched the Star Control cruiser settle behind the hills, beside the Dog.

  “Well, Plum,” said Smith. “It looks like maybe you’ll live after all. Spend quite some time in de-aberration camp, of course. How much oxygen you got left?”

  “Half an hour,” said Plum dully.

  “Better get going…I don’t want to have to carry you in…”

  Noland Bannister nodded to Smith as if he had never been away. The Star Control office looked cool and dim and somewhat smaller than Smith had remembered it.

  “Well, Smith, I see we brought you back alive.” Bannister leaned back in his chair, stretching luxuriantly.

  Smith said coolly, “I’d have made it back by myself.”

  Bannister’s eyebrows rose. “Sure of that?”

  Smith looked Bannister over carefully. He saw an efficient, hard-working man who resented office work, who unconsciously visited his irritation upon his subordinates. He saw a man no bigger, no brainier, no more resourceful than himself.

  “Not that I wasn’t glad to see the cruiser,” he said. “It relieved me of the decidedly unpleasant job of killing Plum.”

  Bannister’s eyebrows rose still higher.

  “What I want to know,” said Smith, “is how the cruiser trailed us out. Surely the coordinates Lowell gave me were wrong?”

  Bannister shook his head. “The coordinates were correct. You merely applied them in the wrong system. You said, ‘Lowell gives us figures; they must refer to navigational data—X-Y-Z coordinates.’ If you had considered a little more deliberately, you would have seen that the figures applied not to the rectangular system, but to astronomical, or polar coordinates.” He blew smoke briskly into the air. “‘Red Arrack’ obviously meant ‘Right Ascension’. ‘Dubonnet’ meant ‘Declination’. ‘Lys’ meant ‘Light-years’. The figures hit Rho Ophiuchus right on the nose: a fine double star. We didn’t waste much time.” He leaned back in his chair.

  Smith flushed. “I made a mistake. Very well. I won’t make it again.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” said Bannister approvingly.

  “What about that rating? Do I still have it?”

  Bannister contemplated him. “You feel you’ve learned something about Star Control work this last trip?”

  “I’ve learned all Captain Plum could teach me.”

  Bannister nodded. “Very well, lieutenant. Take a week off to rest up, then I’ll find another assignment for you.”

  Smith nodded. “Thanks.” He reached in his pocket, laid a glittering green sphere in front of Bannister. “Here’s a souvenir for you.”

  “Ah,” said Bannister, “another of the jewels.”

  “No,” said Smith. “Just a good receiving set.”

  Three-legged Joe

  It might be well to make, in passing, a reference to old-time p
rospectors. Their experience has been gained through vast hardship and peril; no cause for wonder, then, that as a group they are secretive and solitary. It is hard to win their friendship; they are understandably contemptuous of academic training. Much of their lore will die with them and this is a pity, since locked in their minds is knowledge that might well save a thousand lives.—Excerpt from Appendix II, Hade’s Manual of Practical Space Exploration and Mineral Survey.

  John Milke and Oliver Paskell sauntered along Bang-out Row in Merlinville. Recent graduates of Highland Technical Institute, they walked with an assured and casual stride in order to convey an impression of hard-boiled competence. Old-timers on porches along the way stared, then turned and muttered briefly to each other.

  John Milke was rubicund, energetic, positive; when he walked his cheeks and tidy little paunch jiggled. Oliver Paskell, who was dark, spare and slight, affected old-style spectacles and an underslung pipe. Paskell was noticeably less brisk than Milke. Where Milke swaggered, Paskell slouched; where Milke inspected the quiet gray men on the porches with a lordly air, Paskell watched from the corner of his eye.

  Milke pointed. “Number 432, right there.” He opened the gate and approached the porch with Paskell two steps behind.

  A tall bony man sat watching them with eyes pale and hard as marbles.

  Milke asked, “You’re Abel Cooley?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I understand that you’re one of the best outside men on the planet. We’re going out on a prospect trip; we need a good all-around hand, and we’d like to hire you. You’d have to take care of chow, service space-suits, load samples, things like that.”

  Abel Cooley studied Milke briefly, then turned his pale eyes upon Paskell. Paskell looked away, out over the swells of naked granite that rolled six hundred miles west and south of Merlinville.

  Cooley said in a mild voice, “Where you lads thinking to prospect?”

  Milke blinked and frowned. It was his understanding that such questions were more or less taboo, though of course a man had a right to know where his job would take him. “In strict confidence,” said Milke, “we’re going out to Odfars.”