Jackpot

by Clifford D. Simak

  "Not a thing," he said. "The recording of our discussion will supply the data. We'll outline the course of basic study and you then may take such electives as you wish."

  "If we can't haul it all in one trip, we can come back again?" I asked.

  "Oh, definitely. I anticipate you may wish to send a fleet to carry all you need. We'll supply sufficient machines and as many copies of the study recordings as you think you will need."

  "It'll take a lot," I said bluntly, figuring I'd start high and haggle my way down. "An awful lot."

  "I am aware of that," he told me. "Education for an entire culture is no simple matter. But we are geared for it."

  So there we had it—all legal and airtight. We could get anything we wanted and as much as we wanted and we'd have a right to it. No one could say we stole it. Not even Doc could say that.

  The creature explained to me the system of notation they used on the recording cylinders and how the courses would be boxed and numbered so they could be used in context. He promised to supply me with recordings of the electives so I could pick out what we wanted.

  He was real happy about finding another customer and he proudly told me of all the others that they had and he held forth at length on the satisfaction that an educator feels at the opportunity to pass on the torch of knowledge. He had me feeling like a heel.

  Then we were through and I was sitting in the seat again and the second creature was taking the helmet off my head. I got up and the first creature rose to his feet and faced me.

  We couldn't talk any more than we could to start with. It was a weird feeling, to face a being you've just made a deal with and not be able to say a single word that he can understand. But he held out both his hands and I took them in mine and he gave my hands a friendly squeeze.

  "Why don't you go ahead and kiss him?" asked Hutch. "Me and the boys will look the other way."

  Ordinarily, I'd have slugged Hutch for a crack like that, but I didn't even get sore.

  The second creature took the two sticks out of the machine and handed one to me. They'd gone in transparent, but they came out black.

  "Let's get out of here," I said.

  We got out as fast as we could and still keep our dignity—if you could call it that.

  Outside the silo, I got Hutch and Pancake and Frost together and told them what had happened. "We got the universe by the tail," I said, "with a downhill pull."

  "What about Doc?" asked Frost.

  "Don't you see? It's just the kind of deal that would appeal to him. We can let on we're noble and big-hearted and acting in good faith. All I need to do is get close enough to grab him."

  "He won't even listen to you," said Pancake. "He won't believe a word you say."

  "You guys stay right here," I said. "I'll handle Doc."

  I walked back across the stretch of ground between the building and the ship. There was no sign of Doc. I was all set to holler for him, then thought better of it. I took a chance and started up the ladder. I reached the port and there was still no sign of him.

  I moved warily into the ship. I thought I knew what had become of him, but there was no need to take more chances than I had to.

  I found him in his chair in the dispensary. He was stiffer than a goat. The gun lay on the floor. There were two empty bottles beside the chair.

  I stood and looked at him and knew what had happened.

  After I had left, he had got to thinking about the situation and had run into the problem of how he'd climb down off that limb and he had solved it the way he'd solved most of his problems all his life.

  I got a blanket and covered him. Then I rummaged around and found another bottle. I uncorked it and put it beside the chair, where he could reach it easy. Then I picked up the gun and went to call the others in.

  I lay in bed that night and thought about it and it was beautiful.

  There were so many angles that a man didn't know quite where to start.

  There was the university racket which, queerly enough, was entirely legitimate, except that the professor out in the silo never meant it to be sold.

  And there was the quickie vacation deal, offering a year or two on an alien planet in six hours of actual time. All we'd need to do was pick a number of electives in geography or social science or whatever they might call it.

  There could be an information bureau or a research agency, charging fancy prices to run down facts on any and all subjects.

  Without a doubt, there'd be some on-the-spot historical recordings and with those in hand, we could retail adventure, perfectly safe adventure, to the stay-at-homes who might hanker for it.

  I thought about that and a lot of other things which were not quite so sure, but at least probable and worth investigating, and I thought, too, about how the professors had finally arrived at what seemed to me a sure-fire effective medium for education.

  You wanted to know about a thing, so you up and lived it; you learned it on the ground. You didn't read about it or hear about it or even see it in plain three-dimension—you experienced it. You walked the soil of the planet you wanted to know about; you lived with the beings that you wished to study; you saw as an eye-witness, and perhaps as a participant, the history that you sought to learn.

  And it could be used in other ways as well. You could learn to build anything, even a spaceship, by actually building one.

  You could learn how an alien machine might operate by putting it together, step by simple step. There was no field of knowledge in which it would not work—and work far better than standard educational methods.

  Right then and there, I made up my mind we'd not release a single stick until one of us had previewed it. No telling what a man might find in one of them that could be put to practical use.

  I fell asleep dreaming about chemical miracles and new engineering principles, of better business methods and new philosophic concepts. And I even figured out how a man could make a mint of money out of a philosophic concept.

  We were on top of the universe for sure. We'd set up a corporation with more angles than you could shake a stick at. We would be big time. In a thousand years or so, of course, there'd be a reckoning, but none of us would be around to take part in it.

  Doc sobered up by morning and I had Frost heave him in the brig. He wasn't dangerous any longer, but I figured that a spell in pokey might do him a world of good. After a while, I intended to talk to him, but right at the moment I was much too busy to be bothered with him.

  I went over to the silo with Hutch and Pancake and had another session with the professor on the double-seat machine and picked out a batch of electives and settled various matters.

  Other professors began supplying us with the courses, all boxed and labelled, and we set the crew and the engine gang to work hauling them and the machines aboard and stowing them away.

  Hutch and I stood outside the silo and watched the work go on.

  "I never thought", said Hutch, "that we'd hit the jackpot this way. To be downright honest with you, I never thought we'd hit it. I always thought we'd just go on looking. It goes to show how wrong a man can be."

  "Those professors are soft in the head," I said. "They never asked me any questions. I can think of a lot they could have asked that I couldn't answer."

  "They're honest and think everyone's the same. That's what comes of getting so wrapped up in something you have time for nothing else."

  And that was true enough. The professor race has been busy for a million years doing a job it took a million years to do—and another million and a million after that—and that never would be finished.

  "I can't figure why they did it," I said. "There's no profit in it."

  "Not for them," said Hutch, "but there is for us. I tell you, Captain, it takes brains to work out the angles."

  I told him what I had figured out about previewing everything before we gave it out, so we would be sure we let nothing slip away from us.

  Hutch was impressed. "I'll say this for you, Cap
tain—you don't miss a bet. And that's the way it should be. We might as well milk this deal for every cent it's worth."

  "I think we should be methodical about this previewing business," I said. "We should start at the beginning and go straight through to the end."

  Hutch said he thought so, too. "But it will take a lot of time," he warned me.

  "That's why we should start right now. The orientation course is on board already and we could start with that. All we'd have to do is set up a machine and Pancake could help you with it."

  "Help me!" yelled Hutch. "Who said anything about me doing it? I ain't cut out for that stuff. You know yourself I never do any reading…"

  "It isn't reading. You just live it. You'll be having fun while we're out here slaving."

  "I won't do it."

  "Now look," I said, "let's use a little sense. I should be out here at the silo seeing everything goes all right and close at hand so I can hold a pow-wow with the professor if there's any need of it. We need Frost to superintend the loading. And Doc is in the clink. That leaves you and Pancake. I can't trust Pancake with that previewing job. He's too scatterbrained. He'd let a fortune glide right past him without recognizing it. Now you're a fast man with a buck and the way I see it…"

  "Since you put it that way," said Hutch, all puffed up, "I suppose I am the one who should be doing it."

  That evening, we were all dog-tired, but we felt fine. We had made a good start with the loading and in a few more days would be heading home.

  Hutch seemed to be preoccupied at supper. He fiddled witt his food. He didn't talk at all and he seemed like a man with something on his mind. As soon as I could, I cornered him.

  "How's it going, Hutch?"

  "Okay," he said. "Just a lot of gab. Explaining what it's all about. Gab."

  "Like what?"

  "Some of it's hard to tell. Takes a lot of explaining I haven't got the words for. Maybe one of these days you'll find the time to run through it yourself."

  "You can bet your life I will," I said, somewhat sore at him.

  "There's nothing worth a dime in it so far," said Hutch.

  I believed him on that score. Hutch could spot a dollar twenty miles away.

  I went down to the brig to see Doc. He was sober. Also unrepentant. "You outreached yourself this time," he said. "That stuff isn't yours to sell. There's knowledge in that building that belongs to the Galaxy—for free."

  I explained to him what had happened, how we'd found the silo was a university and how we were taking the courses on board for the human race after signing up for them all regular and proper. I tried to make it sound as if we were being big, but Doc wouldn't buy a word of it.

  "You wouldn't give your dying grandma a drink of water unless she paid you in advance," he said. "Don't give me any of that gruff about service to humanity."

  So I left him to stew in the brig a while and went up to my cabin. I was sore at Hutch and all burned up at Doc and my tail was dragging. I fell asleep in no time.

  The work went on for several days and we were almost finished. I felt pretty good about it. After supper, I climbed down the ladder and sat on the ground beside the ship and looked across at the silo. It still looked big and awesome, but not as big as that first day—because now it had lost some of its strangeness and even the purpose of it had lost some of its strangeness, too.

  Just as soon as we got back to civilization, I promised myself, we'd seal the deal as tight as possible. Probably we couldn't legally claim the planet because the professors were intelligent and you can't claim a planet that has intelligence, but there were plenty of other ways we could get our hooks into it for keeps.

  I sat there and wondered why no one came down to sit with me, but no one did, so finally I clambered up the ladder.

  I went down to the brig to have a word with Doc. He was still unrepentant, but he didn't seem too hostile. "You know, Captain," he said, "there have been times when I've not seen eye to eye with you, but despite that I've respected you and sometimes even liked you."

  "What are you getting at?" I asked him. "You can't soft-talk yourself out of the spot you're in."

  "There's something going on and maybe I should tell you. You are a forthright rascal. You don't even take the trouble to deny you are. You have no scruples and probably no morals, and that's all right, because you don't pretend to have. You are…"

  "Spit it out! If you don't tell me what's going on, I'll come in there and wring it out of you."

  "Hutch has been down here several times," said Doc, "inviting me to come up and listen to one of those recordings he is fooling with. Said it was right down my alley. Said I'd not be sorry. But there was something wrong about it. Something sneaky." He stared round-eyed through the bars at me. "You know, Captain, Hutch was never sneaky."

  "Well, go on!"

  "Hutch has found out something, Captain. If I were you, I'd be finding out myself."

  I didn't even wait to answer him. I remembered how Hutch had been acting, fiddling with his food and preoccupied, not talking very much. And come to think of it, some of the others had been acting strangely, too. I'd just been too busy to give it much attention.

  Running up the catwalks, I cussed with every step I took. A captain of a ship should never get so busy that he loses touch—he has to stay in touch all the blessed time. It had all come down to being in a hurry, of wanting to get loaded up and out of there before something happened.

  And now something had happened. No one had come down to sit with me. There'd not been a dozen words spoken at the supper table. Everything felt deadly wrong.

  Pancake and Hutch had rigged up the chart room for the previewing chore and I busted into it and slammed the door and stood with my back against it. Not only Hutch was there, but Pancake and Frost as well and, in the machine's bucket seat, a man I recognized as one of the engine gang. I stood for a moment without saying anything, and the three of them stared back at me. The man with the helmet on his head didn't notice—he wasn't even there.

  "All right, Hutch," I said, "come clean. What is this all about? Why is that man previewing? I thought just you and…"

  "Captain," said Frost, "we were about to tell you."

  "You shut up! I am asking Hutch."

  "Frost is right," said Hutch. "We were all set to tell you. But you were so busy and it came a little hard…"

  "What's hard about it?"

  "Well, you had your heart all set to make yourself a fortune. We were trying to find a way to break it to you gentle."

  I left the door and walked over to him. "I don't know what you're talking about," I said, "but we still make ourselves a killing. There never was a time of day or night, Hutch, that I couldn't beat your head in and if you don't want me to start, you better talk real fast."

  "We'll make no killing, Captain," Frost said quietly. "We're taking this stuff back and we'll turn it over to the authorities."

  "All of you are nuts!" I roared. "For years, we've slaved and sweated, hunting for the jackpot. And now that we have it in our mitts, now that we can walk barefooted through a pile of thousand-dollar bills, you're going chicken on me. What's…"

  "It's not right for us to do it, sir," said Pancake.

  And that "sir" scared me more than anything that had happened so far. Pancake had never called me that before. I looked from one to the other of them and what I saw in their faces chilled me to the bone. Every single one of them thought just the same as Pancake. "That orientation course!" I shouted.

  Hutch nodded. "It explained about honesty and honour."

  "What do you scamps know about honesty and honour?" I raged. "There ain't a one of you that ever drew an honest breath."

  "We never knew about it before," said Pancake, "but we know about it now."

  "It's just propaganda! It's just a dirty trick the professors played on us!"

  And it was a dirty trick. Although you have to admit the professors knew their onions. I don't know if they figured us humans for a race o
f heels or if the orientation course was just normal routine. But no wonder they hadn't questioned me. No wonder they'd made no investigation before handing us their knowledge. They had us stopped before we could even make a move.

  "We felt that since we had learned about honesty," said Frost, "it was only right the rest of the crew should know. It's an awful kind of life we've been living, Captain."

  "So", said Hutch, "we been bringing in the men, one by one, and orienting them. We figured it was the least that we could do. This man is about the last of them."

  "A missionary," I said to Hutch. "So that is what you are. Remember what you told me one night? You said you wouldn't be a missionary no matter what they paid you."

  "There's no need of that," Frost replied coldly. "You can't shame us and you can't bully us. We know we are right."

  "But the money! What about the corporation? We had it all planned out!"

  Frost said: "You might as well forget it, Captain. When you take the course."

  "I'm not taking any course." My voice must have been as deadly as I felt, for not a one of them made a move toward me. "If any of you mealy-mouthed missionaries feel an urge to make me, you can start trying right now."

  They still didn't move. I had them bluffed. But there was no point in arguing with them. There was nothing I could do against that stone wall of honesty and honour. I turned my back on them and walked to the door. At the door, I stopped. I said to Frost: "You better turn Doc loose and give him the cure. Tell him it's all right with me. He has it coming to him. It will serve him right."

  Then I shut the door behind me and went up the catwalk to my cabin. I locked the door, a thing I'd never done before. I sat down on the edge of the bunk and stared at the wall and thought.

  There was just one thing they had forgotten. This was my ship, not theirs. They were just the crew and their papers had run out long ago and never been renewed.

  I got down on my hands and knees and hauled out the tin box I kept the papers in. I went through it systematically and sorted out the papers that I needed—the title to the ship and the registry and the last papers they had signed.

  I laid the papers on the bunk and shoved the box out of the way and sat down again. I picked up the papers and shuffled them from one hand to the other. I could throw them off the ship any time I wished. I could take off without them and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, they could do about it. And what was more, I could get away with it. It was legal, of course, but it was a rotten thing to do. Now that they were honest men and honourable, though, they'd bow to the legality and let me get away with it. And in such a case, they had no one but themselves to thank.