The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories

by Jack Vance

  Sigma Sculptoris washed the quicksilver lake with the palest of lights. Milke and Paskell glumly examined the wreckage of the assay tent.

  Milke’s indignation brimmed over the restraints he had set upon himself. He clenched his fists inside the gloves, glared toward the defile. “I’d like to lay my hands on that three-legged devil…”

  Paskell busied himself among the tatters of the tent. “Nothing but ribbons.”

  Milke said gloomily, “No use to think about mending it…” He watched Paskell curiously. “What are you looking for?”

  “I wonder what possessed him to break into the tent.”

  “Sheer destructiveness.”

  Paskell said thoughtfully, “I notice one thing—” he paused.

  “What?”

  “All our reagents are gone.”

  Milke bent over the wreckage. “All of them?”

  “All the acids. All the bases. He left distilled water, the salts…”

  “Hm,” said Milke. “What do you make of that?”

  Paskell shrugged inside his suit. “It’s suggestive.”

  “Of what, if I may ask?”

  “I’m not sure.” Paskell wandered out over the quicksilver, searching the surface. “He was about here when you shot at him?”

  “Just about.”

  Paskell bent. “Look here.” He held up a rough brownish-gray object the size of his thumb. “Here’s a piece of Three-legged Joe.”

  Milke examined the fragment. “If this is all our weapons did to him—he’s tough. This stuff is flexible!”

  Paskell took back the fragment. “Let’s take it in and run it through the works.”

  They returned into the ship. Paskell clamped the bit in a vise and after exasperating difficulty, succeeded in slicing free a brittle shaving. He forced it flat between a slide and a cover glass, examined it under the microscope. “Remarkable.”

  “Let’s see.” Milke applied his eye. “Hm…it’s like a carpet—woven in three dimensions.”

  “Right. No matter which way you cut or tear, fibers mat up against you…now let’s see what he’s made of.”

  “You’re the technician,” said Milke.

  Paskell looked up from the workbench an hour later. “It’s a very complex silicon compound. The spectroscope shows silicon, lithium, fluorine, oxygen, iron, sulfur, selenium, but I can’t begin to put a name to the stuff.”

  “Call it Joe-hide,” Milke suggested.

  Paskell blew into his pipe, looked solemnly down at the workbench. “I have a tentative theory about Joe’s inner workings…”

  “Well?”

  “Obviously he needs energy to exist. His hide shows no radioactivity, so he must use chemical energy. At least I can’t think of any other form of energy that he could be using.”

  Milke frowned. “Chemical energy? At absolute zero?”

  “He’s insulated. No telling how high his internal temperature goes.”

  “What kind of chemical energy? There’s no free oxygen, no fluorine, nothing…”

  “Presumably he uses whatever he can get—anything that reacts to produce energy.”

  Milke pounded his fist. “We could bait him into a trap, with, say, a chunk of solid oxygen!”

  “I should certainly think so. But what kind of trap?”

  Milke scowled. “A dead-fall.”

  “Here on Odfars gravity is not too strong…we’d have to stack ten thousand cubic yards of rock to make an impression.”

  Milke paced up and down the room. “I’ve got it!”

  “Well?” said Paskell mildly.

  “Perhaps you could make a detonator that we could set off from the ship.”

  “Yes, that could be done.”

  “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll set out about twenty pounds of myradyne, with the detonator in the center. Joe will come past, tuck this bundle into whatever kind of stomach he’s got. We wait till he gets a few hundred yards from the ship, then set it off.”

  Paskell pursed his lips. “If events proceeded along those lines, everything would be fine.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t they? You claim that Joe eats—”

  “Not ‘claim’—‘theorize’.”

  “—anything that produces energy. Well, the myradyne should look to him like ice cream and candy and cake all mixed up. It’s nothing else but energy.”

  “It’s a different kind of energy—the energy of instability. Perhaps he only digests energy of combination.”

  “You’re quibbling,” said Milke with disgust. “I say the idea’s worth trying.”

  Paskell shrugged. “Get out your myradyne.”

  “How long will it take you to fix up a detonator?”

  “Twenty minutes. I’ll hook up a battery and a spare head-set to the cartridge…”

  While Milke gingerly carried the packet of explosive across the lake, Paskell stood by the port watching. Milke surveyed the landscape with fine calculation, setting down the packet, moving it a few yards to the right, another few yards toward the defile. Finally satisfied, he looked back to Paskell for approval. Paskell signaled casually, and his hand fell against the detonation switch. He looked out toward Milke, hastily jumped into his suit, let himself through the port, ran across the lake.

  Milke asked, “What’s the trouble?”

  Paskell said, “That remote detonator doesn’t work. I’d better take a look at it.”

  Milke stared at him truculently. “How do you know it doesn’t work?”

  Paskell made a vague gesture, knelt beside the packet, unfolded the wrapping.

  “You couldn’t have just sensed it,” Milke insisted.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, my hand accidentally hit the switch, and it didn’t go off—so I thought I’d better run out and see what was wrong.”

  Milke seemed to sink inside his suit. For a moment there was silence. “Ah,” said Paskell. “Nothing very serious; I neglected to clip down the battery leads…now it’s ready to go—”

  “I’m going back to the ship,” said Milke thickly.

  Paskell glanced up toward Sigma Sculptoris. “Yes, there’s only a few moments of daylight left…”

  Inside the ship, without the booster goggles, night apparently had already come to the quicksilver lake.

  Milke roused himself from his bunk where he had been quietly sitting, took his goggles, went up into the control blister. “Nothing in sight.”

  Paskell said mildly, “Maybe Joe won’t be back.”

  Milke, with his back to Paskell, said nothing.

  “Maybe he’s been watching us all day,” Paskell remarked.

  Milke leaned forward. “There’s something moving in the gulch…there goes the daylight. Blast it! Now I can’t see anything…and the dome’s in the way of the searchlight again.”

  In sudden inspiration Paskell said, “Use the radar!”

  Milke ran to the screen, flipped some switches, set the key on Green, short range. Paskell swung around the antenna. “Hold it!” said Milke. “Right there!”

  Paskell and Milke bent close to the screen. The plane of the lake, the bulk of the mountains, the gap were all clear. Three-legged Joe, much closer, was a blur. “Can’t you adjust it finer?” demanded Paskell.

  Milke ran to the workbench, came back with a screw-driver, set the Green adjustment to its limit. “How’s that?”

  “Turn off the lights. I feel like I’m in a peep-show.”

  “There, any better?”

  “Yes, much better.”

  Milke came back to the screen. Three-legged Joe was a barrel surmounted by a keg. The legs were a blur; flickering wisps of light to either side of the trunk seemed to indicate arm-members.

  “Look,” sighed Milke. “He’s stopping by the package.”

  The great trunk seemed to waver, collapse.

  “He’s reaching for it.”

  The shape once more reached its full height.

  “He’s stopped,” said Paskell.

  “He’s eating
the myradyne…”

  Three-legged Joe came forward, and presently blurred out past the resolving power of the set.

  The ship jerked tentatively. Milke and Paskell braced themselves. Nothing more. Silence. The radar screen was empty. Paskell swivelled the antenna. Nothing.

  “He’s gone,” said Milke. “Where’s the detonator switch?”

  “Wait!” Paskell whispered. He turned on the lights. “Look!”

  Milke jerked back. Pressed close to the port beside his face was a rough silvery brown-gray substance.

  The port suddenly showed black. A flicker of movement passed the stern port.

  “Off with the lights,” hissed Milke. “Back to the radar.”

  A blur of golden light resolved into an ambling barrel and keg.

  “Now,” said Milke, “press the button! Quick! Before he gets out of range.”

  “Just a moment,” said Paskell. “Suppose he’s smarter than we think?”

  “No time for theorizing now,” cried Milke. “Where’s the button?”

  Paskell pushed him away stubbornly. “First, we’d better take a look around.” He climbed into his space suit while Milke fumed and ranted.

  Taking no heed, Paskell left the ship. Out the port Milke could see the glimmer of his head lamp.

  The outside port sighed open, thudded shut. Paskell came back into the ship. Milke had his finger on the switch. Paskell, unable to talk through the helmet, banged his glove against the wall. In his other hand he held up a brown packet.

  Milke’s fingers fell nervously away.

  Paskell split himself out of the suit. “I didn’t think he’d like myradyne,” he said in modest triumph. “The wrong kind of chemical energy. He left it beside the ship.”

  “Gad!” said Milke huskily. “Twice on the same day I’m blown to smithereens…”

  Paskell carefully removed the detonator. “Every day we’re learning more about Three-legged Joe.”

  Milke’s voice was warm with emotion. “Every day we come closer to killing ourselves.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Paskell, “we’ll try again.”

  Over a cup of hot coffee Milke asked, “How do you mean, try again? So far as I can see, we’re licked. Our guns are no good, he refuses to eat our explosives. Certainly nothing in the world could poison him.”

  “True.” Paskell tamped black shag into his pipe. “The methods for killing human beings don’t apply to Three-legged Joe.”

  “No wonder those old goats at Merlinville gave us the laugh.”

  Paskell puffed thoughtfully. “If we could concentrate enough heat on Joe, for a long enough time—”

  “Nuts!” said Milke. “If we had an ocean we couldn’t even drown him.”

  Paskell said through the cloud of smoke. “If we melted a puddle in the quicksilver and he fell in, and the quicksilver froze around him—”

  “Impossible. Quicksilver at absolute zero is super-conductive. We’d have to heat half the planet.”

  “Super-conductive…Right. So it is.” Paskell stared dreamily into the haze. “I wonder how far the quicksilver extends around the planet?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Maybe we’ll electrocute Joe.”

  “Hah!” spat Milke. “With what? Our two thousand-watt generator?”

  Paskell said, “First we’ll have to check on the quicksilver.”

  “On foot? With Joe pounding along behind us, breathing down our necks?”

  Paskell said carelessly, “I imagine we can move as fast as Joe.”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he runs like a greyhound.”

  “We’ll have our guns.”

  “Fat lot of good they’ll do.”

  “Well—I suppose we could take up our ship and cruise around the planet. In fact it might be better…”

  His companion had been completely absorbed in his theorizing when Milke called out in alarm, “You’re setting down almost in that defile!”

  “Good,” said Paskell. “We want to have the ship as near to the gap as possible.”

  “I don’t see why,” Milke said petulantly. “In fact I don’t understand what you’re up to.”

  “We’re planning to electrocute Three-legged Joe,” said Paskell patiently. “We’ve been around the planet; we’ve established that the quicksilver is interconnected everywhere except at this fifty-foot saddle of gray chalk. We’ve got enough lead and copper aboard to bridge the gap with a fairly heavy cable—which we will do. We can melt a good connection into the quicksilver with thermite.”

  “So then?”

  “While you’re installing the cable, I’ll be rigging up some kind of fancy induction coil to take power from our generator and build up watts in the round-planet circuit.”

  Milke stared incredulously at Paskell. “What good will that do?”

  “You’ll arrange the cable so that when Joe comes along the defile, he’ll have to take hold of the cable to break it. As soon as he does, he’ll get everything that we’ve been feeding into the circuit.”

  Milke shook his head. “It won’t work.”

  Paskell puffed at his pipe. “And why not, pray?”

  “Think of the hysteresis in all those miles of quicksilver—the inlets and bays and channels. There’ll be a billion little whorls and eddies…”

  “There’s no energy lost,” said Paskell. “There’s no resistance, so there can’t be any production of heat.”

  “There’ll be field conflicts,” insisted Milke.

  “Only for a few hundredths of a second. After that the fields will necessarily enforce a flow pattern that minimizes the impedance.”

  Milke shook his head. “I hope you know what you’re talking about…But—” he raised a finger “—we’ve got another problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The planet’s natural magnetism. If we start current flowing around the planet, we’re setting up artificial north and south poles. We’ll be fighting the natural field.”

  Paskell blinked owlishly. “There is no natural field to this planet. I checked immediately.”

  Milke threw up his hands. “Go to it, Oliver. It’s your party.”

  Milke and Paskell stood contemplating the defile, across which, at the height of their eyes, dangled a rude cable. Near the lake, the cable passed through a long box, from which came leads running to the generator inside the ship.

  Paskell said solemnly, “There’s a trillion amps running through the cable.”

  “A few more,” said Milke, “it’ll swell like a poisoned pup.”

  “There is a practical limit,” admitted Paskell. “At absolute zero the resistance of super-conductive metals is infinitesimal, but still is greater than nothing. When the cable carries a load that generates heat faster than the heat radiates off, the temperature in the cable rises until it reaches the lower limit of super-conductivity.”

  “And then?”

  Paskell flung up his arms. “No more cable.”

  Milke regarded his handiwork anxiously. “Perhaps we’d better check.”

  “How? We don’t have a thermocouple aboard that sensitive.”

  Milke shrugged. “All we can do then is hope.”

  “Right. Hope that Joe comes down that pass before the cable goes.” He looked up at the sun. “Still an hour or two of light.”

  Milke said doubtfully, “The set-up doesn’t look very lethal. Suppose Joe grabs the cable and breaks it, and nothing happens—what then?”

  “Something’s got to happen. We’re feeding a constant two thousand watts into that circuit. When Joe breaks the cable those watts have to go somewhere—they just don’t evaporate. They keep on going—through Joe. And if Joe doesn’t feel it, I’ll personally go after him with a pocket-knife.”

  Milke turned Paskell a surprised glance: strong talk from modest Oliver Paskell.

  Paskell was restlessly beating his hands together. “We’re forgetting something.”

  Milke turned, looked toward the ship. />
  “Ah, yes,” said Paskell.

  Milke made a strange noise. His arm jerked up.

  “The bait,” said Paskell. “We want to set out some acid.”

  “Never mind the bait,” rasped Milke. “We’re the bait…Joe’s behind us…”

  Paskell sprang around. Three-legged Joe stood in front of the ship looking at them.

  “Run,” said Milke. “Up under the cable…And if it doesn’t work—God help us…”

  Three-legged Joe came forward, like a one-legged man on crutches.

  Paskell stood frozen. “Run!” screamed Milke. He darted back, seized Paskell’s arm.

  Paskell broke into a shambling run.

  “Faster,” panted Milke. “He’s gaining on us.”

  Paskell ran to the mountainside, tried to claw his way up the sheer rock.

  “No, no!” yelled Milke. “Through the defile!”

  Paskell turned, ducked under one of Joe’s enormous arms, scuttled toward the defile.

  Milke tackled him. “Under the cable—not through! Under!” He grabbed Paskell’s legs, drew him under the cable. Three-legged Joe ambled casually after them.

  Paskell rose to his feet, looked wildly around. “Easy,” said Milke. “Easy…”

  Cautiously they backed up the defile. Milke panted, “No use running now. If your contraption doesn’t work, we might as well reconcile ourselves to death.”

  Paskell asked suddenly, “Did you turn on the generator?”

  Milke froze. “The generator? Inside the ship? You mean the power out to the circuit?”

  “Yes, the generator…”

  “No, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  Milke said despairingly, “You’ll know in a minute. Here comes Joe—”

  Three-legged Joe paused by the cable. He walked forward. The cable touched his chest. He lifted up his arms. “Close your eyes,” cried Paskell.

  The sudden glare spattered darts of light through their eyelids.

  “You turned on the generator,” said Milke.

  Three-legged Joe lay forty feet distant, twitching feebly.

  “He’s not dead,” muttered Paskell.

  Milke stood looking down at the silver-gray hulk. “We can’t cut him up. We can’t tie him. We can’t…”

  Paskell ran to the ship. “Get out the grapples.”

  Returning from the Merlinville Deed Office, Milke and Paskell stepped into Tom Hand’s Chandlery for a new tent and a replacement set of reagents.