And indeed it appeared to be the truth. Crawling backwards out of the smoke came a seared being, tugging at the boot of a second. Tinoi was all action. He swooped in, holding his breath against the fumes, and snatched up the obviously live one.
Coughing and beating out a burning spot on his coat, he let her slide into the grass. “There’s the missing one,” he said. “Now we can get on our way.”
Big Lem looked down at her and made a disdaining face. She was very badly singed property, an enormous burn blotting out almost all of her face and destroying one eye. Wounded and bedraggled, it was plain that she would no longer gladden the eyes of man.
Tinoi looked at her tag, the one around her ankle, and then stared at the ear where the repossession tag should have been and was not. He looked at his boss. “This is Dotty Grennan, the one they picked up ’specially for you. She sure is spoiled for looks.”
“Throw her into the line. Some men will buy anything,” said Big Lem.
“Don’t guess she’ll be able to walk much,” said Tinoi.
“What’s that to me? Throw her in. Captain! Captain! Here, you, Foster. Get up there and tell my captain to send Connoly and two marines out here and stand by to take off.”
The man named Foster leaped up into the Scoutcraft Raider with the message and came back shortly, eating a chocolate bar, to walk the lineup.
“Air,” moaned the slaves. “Air!”
“Shut up, you repossessed mothers’ sons,” said Tinoi, beating them into line with the butt of his blastick. “Form up, form up, or I’ll give you a lot more air than you’ll ever be able to use.” He tried four times to make an old man stand on his feet and then left off profanity, and held an open hand toward Tolliver.
“I’ll have to have a few charges,” said Tinoi. “After all, it’s bad enough to walk to Minga without having to drag a hundred and sixteen passed-out repossessions.”
“It’s a waste of company money,” said Big Lem. But he signaled Connoly as the big gunner came out of the Raider and Connoly went back for charges.
These were small cylinders with “AL” painted in red on them, and when they were exploded around the slaves, sent off a greenish spray which hung foggily about them. Tinoi stepped clear and waited for the murk to dissipate and then, when the slaves had revived, turned to and lined them up without further delay.
Big Lem watched the crowd move off. He knew Tinoi would probably be carried most of the way in litters made by Connoly and he understood what would happen to a couple of those younger girls. And he knew a dozen would be sold and reported dead. But Lem Tolliver could appreciate that kind of loyalty and wouldn’t ever have understood another kind of man. He grinned as the last of them disappeared in the trees and without another look at the smoking spaceship, boarded the Scoutcraft Raider and took off.
An hour later Ole Doc came to himself lying in the grass where the girl had pulled him. For a little while he lay there and enjoyed the cool fragrance of the soft blades around him. It was quite novel to be alive and to be so glad to be alive.
After a little he rose up on his elbows and looked at the Morgue. The alloy had stopped dripping and the smoke had cleared away but the poor old ship looked ready for a spare-parts house. The upper turret had been straight-armed back, a ten-foot hole lay under her keel and the keel was bent, and the near port had been melted entirely out of line. And then he took heart. For she wasn’t hulled that he could see and her tubes at one end and her texas on the other were untouched. He started to spring up but the second he put weight on his right hand it collapsed and he felt sick.
He looked down and saw that his palm was seared away and his wrist sprained or broken. He felt rapidly of his shoulders and chest but his cloak had protected him there. One boot was almost seared off but his ankle and foot were uninjured. Aside from singes, his wrist and hand, he had survived what must have been a considerable conflagration. He came up swiftly then and went through the hot door. Small spirals of smoke were rising from the salon upholstery. One huge gold panel had curled off its mountings from heat and a silver decanter was lying in a puddle on the charred rug, struck squarely by a ray translating itself through the hull.
But the young woman was gone and Ole Doc, looking back at the trampled meadow through the misshapen door, understood suddenly how he must have got out here. No calloused space ranger would have tried to rescue him. Either the girl had tried or Hippocrates—
“Hippocrates!”
“Hippocrates.”
“Hippocrates,” echoed the empty cabins.
Ole Doc raced into the texas and looked around. He went aft to the tube rooms and found them empty. And he had nearly concluded that they must have taken his little slave when he thought of the jammed turret.
The ladder was curled into glowing wreckage and the trap at the top had fused solidly shut from the impact of a direct hit. Ole Doc stood looking upward, a lump rising in his throat. He was afraid of what he would find behind that door.
He went casting about him for a burning torch and was startled by a whir and clang in the galley as he passed it. In a surge of hope he thrust open the door. But little Hippocrates was not there. Pans, spoons and spits were just as he had left them. A bowl of gooey gypsum and mustard, the slave’s favorite concoction for himself, stood half eaten on the sink, spoon drifting minutely from an upright position to the edge of the bowl as the neglected mixture hardened. A small pink-bellied god grinned forlornly in a niche, gazing at the half-finished page of a letter to some outlandish world. The whir and clang had come from the opening oven door on the lip of which now stood the ejected cake, patiently waiting for icing, decorations and nine hundred and five candles.
Ole Doc closed the galley softly as though he had been intruding on a private life and stood outside, hand still on the latch. For a long, long time he had never thought about it. But life without Hippocrates would be a desperate, hard thing to bear.
He swore a futile, ordinary oath and went to his operating room. His hand was burning but he did not heed it. There was an amputator in here someplace which would saw through diamonds with cold fire. He spilled three drawers on the floor and in the blinding glitter of instruments finally located the tool.
It wasn’t possible to reach the trap without taking away the twisted ladder and for some minutes he scorched himself on the heated metal until he could cut it all away. Then it occurred to him that he would have no chance of getting Hippocrates down if there was anything left of him, for that little fellow weighed five hundred kilos, even if he was less than a meter tall.
Ole Doc found rope and mattresses and then, standing on a chair, turned the cold fire on a corner of the trap. He stopped abruptly for fear the excess jet would touch Hippocrates’ body on the other side and for a while stood frowning upward. Then he seized a thermometer from his pocket and began to apply it all over the steel above him. In a minute or two he had found a slightly higher temperature over an area which should compare with the little slave’s body and he chalked it off. Then, disregarding the former lines of the trap, he jetted out five square feet of resistant metal as though it had been butter. The torch was entirely spent when he had but an inch to go, but the lip had sagged from weight enough for him to pry down. A moment later he was crawling into the turret.
Hippocrates lay curled into himself as though asleep. He was seared and blackened by the heat of the melting girder which had buckled and pinned him down.
Ole Doc hurriedly put a heart counter against the slave’s side and then sagged with relief when he saw the needle beat-beat-beat in faint but regularly spaced rhythm. He stood up, feeling his own life surging back through him, and wrenched away the confining girder.
Carefully, because he had never made any study of the slave’s anatomy—which anatomy had been the reason Ole Doc had bought him at that auction God knew how many, many scores of years ago, two centuries? three?—Ole Doc trussed the little fellow in a rope cradle and, by steadying the standing part over a split j
et barrel, began the weary task of lowering the enormous weight down to the mattresses below.
It took a full twenty minutes to get Hippocrates on an operating table, but when that was done, Ole Doc could only examine him in perplexity. Other than diet, which was gypsum, Ole Doc knew nothing about the slave.
The antennae were not injured. The arms were bruised but whole. The legs appeared sound. But there was a chipped look about the chest which argued grave injury. Hippocrates was physician to himself and, knowing this, Ole Doc went back to the tiny cabin off the galley.
He found some amulets which looked like witchcraft, and a bottle which his keen nose identified as diluted ink with a medical dosage on the label. He found some chalky-looking compresses and some white paint.
Completely beaten he went back and sat down beside the table. Hippocrates’ heart was beating more faintly.
His anxiety becoming real now, like a hand around his throat, Ole Doc hurried to the galley. He had seen Hippocrates tipsy a few times and that meant a stimulant. But it wasn’t a stimulant which Ole Doc found.
The letter was addressed in plain lingua spacia.
Bestin Karjoy
Malbright, Diggs Import Co.
Minga, Arphon.
By Transcript Corporation of the Universe charge UMS ODM
Dear Human Beings:
Forty-six years ago you had one Bestin Karjoy of my people doing your accounts. Please to give same Bestin this message.
Hello Bestin. How are you? I am fine. I have not been feeling too good lately because of the old complaint and if your father still employ with you, you tell him Hippocrates needs to come see him and get some advice. My master got birthday today so I give him happy birthday with nine hundred and five candles which surprise you for human, but you know how big and famous he is and anyway, I can come in gig tonight and see you about dawn-dark halfway on park front because I don’t know where you really live and your father . . .
The cake must have demanded something there, for it stopped in a blot. “At five dollars a word outer-space rates!” exclaimed Ole Doc. But when he had read it through he was willing to have it at five hundred a word.
He hastened back to the operating table and put the gypsum and mustard close to hand, stacking with it water, the diluted ink and a call phone turned on to the band of his own, propping up a note:
“Hold on, old fellow. I’m returning with your friend Bestin or his father. I’ll stay tuned on this phone.”
His hand annoyed him as he tried to write with it and when the note had been placed he plunged his arm to the elbow into a catalyst vat and felt the painful prickling which meant a too-fast heal. It would scar at this speed but what was a scar?
He saw that the gig, which had been on the side away from the blast, was uninjured, and he had almost launched it when he saw it would never do to go demanding things in his present charred state.
Impatiently he threw on a new shirt, boots and cloak and, thrusting a kit and a blaster into his belt, lost no further time.
The gig was a small vacuum-atmosphere boat, jet powered and armed. It was capable of several light-years’ speed and was naturally very difficult to handle at finites like ten thousand miles an hour. Ole Doc went straight past Minga twice before he properly found it, glimpsed it just long enough to see the landing strip in the middle of town and put the gig down to paving at three hundred and eighty.
Ordinarily Ole Doc disliked middle-sized towns. They didn’t have the chummy “hello stranger” attitude of the pioneer villages of space and yet lacked any of the true comforts of the city. Built by money-hungry citizenry around a space repair yard, such towns were intent upon draining off the profit of the mines and farms incoming and outgoing. They were, in short, provincial. A rover port had some color and danger, a metropolis had comfort and art. Such as Minga had law and order and a Rotarian club and were usually most confoundedly proud of being dull.
And so Ole Doc didn’t give Minga much of a glance, either passing over or walking in. Brick fronts and badly painted signs—houses all alike—people all— But even Ole Doc in his rush had to slow and stare.
Minga was a city, according to the Star Pilot, of ninety thousand people where “a limited number of fuel piles, ice, fresh water, provisions and some ship chandlery can be obtained” and “repairs can be made to small craft in cradles with capacity under one hundred tons” and “the space hospital is government staffed by the Sun12 System Navy with limited medical stores available” and “two small hotels and three restaurants provide indifferent accommodations due to the infrequency of stopovers.” Not exactly the sort of town where you would expect to see a well-dressed man of fifty carefully but unmistakably stalking a cat.
It was not even a fat cat, but a gaunt-ribbed, mat-furred, rheumy-eyed sort of feline which wouldn’t go a pound of stringy meat. But from the look on the well-dressed gentleman’s face, there was no other reason than that.
Had he seen a riot, a golden palace, a ten-tailed dog or a parade of seals singing “Hallelujah,” Ole Doc would not have been much amazed, for one sees many things strange and disorders unreasonable in a lifetime of rolling through the systems great and small. Ole Doc had been everywhere and seen everything, had long ago come to the conclusion that it wasn’t even curious, but a well-dressed, obviously influential old man engaging in the stalk of a mangy cat—well!
The gentleman had crept around the corner to pursue his game and now he had a fence for cover and with it was using up the twenty-yard lead the cat had had originally. In his hand the gentleman held a butterfly net and in his eye there was hunger.
The cat was unable to locate its pursuer now and stopped a bit to pant. It looked beleaguered as though it had been hunted before and the old gentleman had it worried. It crouched warily behind a post and condensed itself anew when it saw Ole Doc some thirty feet away. This new distraction was its undoing.
Soft footed and alert, the old gentleman left the fence and crossed the walk out of the cat’s range of vision. Too late the animal caught the shadow beside it and sprang to escape. There was a swish of net and a blur of fur, a yowl of dismay and a crow of triumph and the old gentleman, by twisting the net into a bag below the hoop, struck an attitude of victory.
Ole Doc started breathing again and walked forward. The old gentleman, seeing him, held up the prize.
“A fine morsel now, isn’t it, sir?” said the old gentleman. “Been three solid weeks since we’ve dined on good, tasty cat. Don’t yowl, my good rabbit-avec-croutons-to-be, for it won’t do you a bit of good. My, my, my, that was a long chase. Ten solid blocks and tortuous, too, what with thinking every instant some guttersnipe would leap out and snatch my prize from me. For I’m not as young as once I was. Dear me.”
Ole Doc could see no insanity in the fellow’s eyes nor find any fault other than this enthusiasm for dining on mangy cats. But, he decided suddenly, this was no time to follow the quirks of the human mind. Serious business—very serious business—was waiting for him in the wrecked hull of the Morgue. He glanced anxiously at his radio pack. The tick-tick-tick of the heart counter was very slow.
“Sir,” said Ole Doc, “while I can’t share your enthusiasm for cat on toast, I could use some of your knowledge of this town. Could you tell me where I might find a company known as Malbright, Diggs? They import, I think, and have their main office here in Minga.”
At this the old gentleman stopped admiring his capture which was now entirely subdued. “Malbright, Diggs. Bless me!” And he removed a pocket handkerchief and blew his nose heavily. “You won’t be from any town on Arphon, then.”
“Be quick, man. Where can I find any member of that firm?”
The old gentleman blew again. “Well,” he said, “if you’ve a mind for fantasy, you might try looking in heaven and then again, as their creditors would have had it, in hell. One place or the other I dare say you’ll find my poor old billiard companion, Malbright, and his sad little partner, Diggs. But Arphon isn’t hel
l, sir. Indeed it’s two stops beyond.”
“The firm has failed, then. Where was it located?”
“Oh, the original Malbright, Diggs has failed, sir. But it’s Air, Limited you’d have to approach to get any trace of their affairs. Malbright was the cause of it, you see, poor chap. Got to needing more and more air and couldn’t pay the bill out of his share. And he took to . . . well,” and here he blew his nose again, “from the till, you might say, and one day the firm failed. Poor Malbright. Had to have the air, you see. Couldn’t pay the bill. And as it was a partnership, Diggs stood ready but unable to settle the accounts. And that was the end of it. A fine, thriving business it was, too, until Malbright took to needing air. But it’s all gone, all gone.” And he looked around him at the autumn day as though the dismal winter snows lay heavily over the streets.
Ole Doc frowned. “Air? What nonsense is this about air? Short time ago I heard something of it. But I haven’t any time. You’ll remember a small extraracial clerk that Malbright had, then. Probably four-handed. Name of Bestin Karjoy—”
“Oh, dear me, no. Malbright and Diggs must have had a thousand clerks. Business ran into the billions of tons per annum, you know. Customers all over the system. Fine, rich company. Poor Malbright.” And he honked again on the handkerchief.
Ole Doc was impatient. “How could a firm like that fail just because one partner needed a little air? Why, man, the whole sky around here is full of it. Air!”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the old gentleman, shocked. “I beg your pardon.” And before Ole Doc could think of further questions, the old gentleman hurried away, clutching his precious rabbit soup in the form of a very mangy cat, and was gone.
Ole Doc’s boots were angry on the pavement. He was struck now, as he looked for signs, with an air of decay and unhappiness about the town. There were people here and there but they were listless and incurious, like beings who have been hungry too long or who despair of any hope. Store windows were clutters of dusty junk. The theater marquee was advertising the personal appearance of a singer ten years dead. Shutters groaned in the faint wind and stairs staggered in crazy disrepair. The town looked like it had been sacked and repeopled with ghosts.
Ole Doc Methuselah Page 11