The ship orbited thirty miles above Jason’s head as he was firing brick. The reporter was using a telephoto lens and didn’t see Jason. If Jason had thought of looking up he wouldn’t have been able to see the ship.
Clay had been something of a problem to Jason. He hadn’t been sure of how well the Martian clays would fire until he remembered the vitrified rubble tossed up whenever a ship took off in the old days. He pondered about fueling the oven too. Experiments proved that some of the Martian bushes would burn well and didn’t leave an offensive taste in the bread, but Jason didn’t have the air to spare for burning them. In the end he reluctantly fired his oven electrically. The bubble’s solar batteries furnished plenty of power.
About the time he was removing his first batch of bread from the oven a man on Earth was reading a letter which had run the gauntlet through progressively mote critical readers and eventually landed in the sanctum sanctorum, a basket on his desk.
Dear Sir:
I read your series of articles on Bubbletown with great interest since my husband was one of the survivors. When l called his attention to the article he took one look at the pictures and said, “Hogwash! That’s not Bubbletown!”
I don’t intend to tell you how to run your business but do you think it sporting to deliberately perpetrate a hoax on the reading public?
Sincerely,
Anna K. Wilson
“Get Rawson in here!” the man roared. Across the room a picture fell from the wall.
“Yes, sir,” a secretary replied through the squawk box.
“What is it, chief?” the reporter asked a few minutes later. The chief passed the letter to him wordlessly.
Rawson read the letter and handed it back. “Some crank,” he said. “Why the excitement?”
“You mean you can stand there with a straight face and tell me you didn’t spend six months getting drunk in some dive on the moon and faking a bunch of pictures?” Rawson stared in astonishment. “I can produce dozens of witnesses to prove these prints are genuine,” he said quietly.
The chief glared at him suspiciously. “Then how do you account for this?” he waved the letter.
“I don’t know unless—”
They looked at each other in shocked silence.
“My God!” the chief breathed.
“It’ll make the biggest story since Robinson Crusoe.”
Rawson compared the pictures he had taken with earlier shots hastily summoned from the morgue. “Whoever he is, he’s sure fixed the place up. Look at that brickwork. Looks like a garden over there.”
“Well, he’s had plenty of time.” Four of the five Bubbletown survivors were still alive. With Rawson’s help they reconstructed the day of the explosion. Eventually somebody remembered what Albert Jason had been doing that morning, and other details fell rapidly into place.
The news syndicate played the story for all it was worth and a rescue expedition was organized. Opposition season was due in another month. When it came a ship was ready.
When the ship sat down at the entrance to tunnel “A” on the opposite side of the mountain from Bubbletown, Jason was asleep. Rocket noise carried less than a half kilometer in the thin Martian air, and seismic shock was absorbed in the stack of mattresses which comprised Jason’s bed. His first warning was a whoosh of lowering air pressure as a crowd of excited rescuers came boiling through the airlock.
So many people made him nervous after years of uninterrupted calm. He wished irritably that they wouldn’t all talk at once.
“Say something for the people on Earth.” Someone thrust a microphone in his face. Jason eyed it with distaste.
“I can’t think of anything to say,” he said finally. His voice sounded strange in his ears. He had gotten out of the habit of talking and singing to himself. It used to make him feel lonely.
They scattered about the dome, admiring his model railway and trampling his roses. Someone emerged from the hydroponic section with a fistful of half-grown rye. “What’s this weed?” he shouted at Jason.
Someone photographed the oven from various angles and smeared lampblack over the gleaming brass door handle when a reflection threatened to fog one of his pictures. A man thrust a bottle at Jason and laughed uproariously when he choked and sputtered at the unaccustomed taste of whisky.
Several of the more boisterous finally went back to the ship to sleep. Jason said he’d used all the bedding and mattresses up in various projects. The others straggled out one by one. The pilot stayed longest.
“What’s it really like on Earth?” Jason asked. They sat in overstuffed chairs of Jason’s manufacture, drinking his home-brewed ale and munching on his rye bread with mustard and Swiss cheese.
The pilot thought a moment. “You didn’t leave a wife or anything like that, did you?” he asked.
Jason shook his head. “Parents dead too,” he added.
“Well,” the pilot said, “I’m stationed on Luna. Don’t get down to Earth very often. Two days in that gravity and my feet are killing me.” He hesitated, trying to envision the changes wrought in the last seven years. “There’s a new president. Automobiles are a little faster. Juvenile delinquency’s a little higher. Population too. I guess that’s about it,” he concluded.
Jason sat sipping his ale. He finished it and reached into the humidor. They lit cigars and smoked in companionable silence.
“They’ll never let you, you know,” the pilot said after a while.
Jason looked up quickly.
The pilot gazed at the glowing tip of his cigar. “If I stayed they’d stay too. I’ll have to take them back. It wouldn’t work for two anyway,” he said regretfully. “We’d be at each other’s throats in six months.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Jason said.
“They’ll take you home, make no mistake. You’ll go quietly or you’ll go in a strait jacket. Well, guess I’d better be getting back to the ship. Nice to have met you.” He held out his hand.
Jason shook it and saw him to the airlock. He went back to the fireplace where electric elements simulated glowing coals amid his handmade bricks. When the cigar was finished he went around the bubble, gathering things he might need. He put them into the tractor and drove it through the airlock. He sealed the airlock carefully and drove into the entrance of tunnel “B”. There he planted a small explosive charge and detonator. He drove in another hundred-meters and sent a radar beam into the detonator.
Seismic shock traveled through the hard Martian soil and up the landing stilts into the ship. The others went on sleeping. The pilot released a tremendous sigh but it was a long time before he slept.
Three days later they left. The rubble in the entrance of tunnel “B” made it only too evident what had happened. The pilot stood briefly before the tunnel with his hat in his hand, then turned and followed the others.
Jason waited until he felt the seismic wave of the ship’s blastoff. It took him a full day to dig out. The airlock of Bubbletown gaped open. Jason drove the tractor in and gazed sickly at his roses. With luck he might bring some of them out of the frost blight. He closed the airlock and began building pressure from the reserve tanks. In the hydroponic section the lettuce was totally ruined. It would be months before he would have a new crop from seed. The wheat and rye were drooping.
They had rifled his symphonic col lection for souvenirs. The Berlioz tapes were nearly all gone. Drifting sand had gritted its way through the airlock into his curtains. The hand-embroidered spread on his bed was gone.
The dirty bastards, he mumbled. Then he remembered there was no one to hear him.
Stop Being a Sucker
An honestly tough, honestly sentimental story about a man who had reached a crossroads in his life without realizing it and had a tremendous decision to make . . .
IT WAS FRIDAY EVENING, ABOUT closing time. Burgess was wondering how much longer he was going to keep on being a sucker when this big man tooled a Cadillac in the door. It was not one of those flashy jobs where the c
hrome looks as if it was put on with a trowel. This car was so conservative that only careful inspection would have revealed the hopped-up motor and extra-thick glass in back.
“How about a tuneup?” the driver asked. He had an odd voice, like a whisper turned up full volume.
Burgess lifted the hood and listened. He was a slight, dark man, nearing middle age. Rubbing a hand over his quilted black cap, he said, “Mister, you tune it any finer and you’ll need a pilot’s license.”
The driver had a wrestler’s waddle with its intimation of potential violence. He bit the end off a cigar. “Alone?” he asked, glancing at the front.
“Very much so.” Something about the fat man’s greasy grin made Burgess wonder if he’d heard about it too. Probably. Everybody had known but Burgess.
“I hear you’re quite a fisherman, Mr. Burgess,” the fat man said.
Burgess tried to remember if he knew the fat man from somewhere. “I suppose you saw in the paper about me winning the yellowtail derby last month,” he said.
“Nice,” the fat man said, pointing at Burgess’s camper truck. “Air-conditioned, four-wheel drive, boat on top. I bet four people could sleep in there. Why do you always go alone?”
“My wife didn’t care for fishing trips in Mexico. By a strange coincidence, neither did my partner. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m about to close up for the day.”
“I bet every border guard knows you,” the fat man persisted. “Just sees your truck and waves you right on through. Like to make a little bundle?”
Burgess caught his breath and felt the little prickle which honest men feel at these times. “Not a chance,” he said. “Those customs inspectors aren’t stupid. Even good old Burgess gets x-rayed once in a while, just to keep him good.”
“On the way down?”
“They put up roadblocks only when somebody robs the mint. What’d you do?”
“Five yards to haul some passengers and zip the lip.”
Burgess hesitated again. His partner had tapped the till and Burgess’s wife at the same time. Burgess didn’t feel too strongly about the wife any more, but the legal beagles had just about finished the till before partnerships marital and mechanical were dissolved. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said.
Almost casually, the big man brought his knee up into Burgess’s solar plexus. “Take all the time you want—a whole minute,” he said, puffing on the cigar.
When Burgess’s breath came back, he got up from the floor. He divided his hundred and thirty pounds into the wrestler’s two hundred and fifty, making allowance for the bulge under the fat man’s armpit. He added five hundred dollars and divided by his chances of collecting. The result was not encouraging.
“Use your phone?” the fat man said in his roaring whisper. Without waiting for an answer, he picked it up and dialed. “Fred? Come and pick up the car.” Casters screeched as he sat in Burgess’s swivel chair. He backed the chair against the desk and let his bulk flow back over the flat ratebook.
Still breathing painfully, Burgess moved about locking the gas pumps, taking in the hoses and oil cans. A boy on a bicycle tossed in a paper. The fat man started reading it with one eye. The other did not leave Burgess.
The Fred who came to pick up the car was a small man, about Burgess’s size. His hair was brown, his face nondescript. His suit was not zoot—it was just the chain that made it look that way. Burgess watched the way he kept twirling it until the little man’s eyes caught his and held for an instant. Fie decided the fat man was pleasant by comparison. After a moment’s whispered conversation Fred got into the Cadillac and drove away very law-abidingly.
“How long before we leave?” Burgess asked.
The fat man lowered the newspaper slightly. “Be an hour before Fred and the boys get back
Burgess lay down on a creeper and started to scoot under the truck.
“I could blow a dozen holes in you before you go six inches farther,” the fat man said quietly.
Burgess sat up again. “The muffler’s loose,” he explained. “I wanted to make sure it didn’t fall off.”
“We’ll take that chance.”
Burgess shrugged. “Mind if I read my paper?” he asked after a moment.
“Be my guest.” The fat man tossed him a section. Burgess sat cross-legged on the creeper and studied the front page, looking for a robbery or kidnaping. Nothing. Several aircraft carriers in port; the town crowded with sailors but, when wasn’t it? Then he found it: a small item on the local-news page about how the aircraft plants’ paydays just happened to fall on the same day the navy paid off and the navy was paying by check this month to close out the fiscal year. Something about a record money shipment to prevent the check-cashing snafu that had paralyzed San Diego the last time everything came on the same day. It began to figure.
“Planning to stay long in Mexico?” Burgess asked.
“Long enough.”
“¿Entiendes el idioma del pats?”
“Hug?”
“Kind of rough if you don’t speak the language,” Burgess said.
“Don’t worry, we got friends.”
Burgess wished he had a few of his own. “How far do you expect me to haul you?” he asked.
“We’ll tell you when to stop.”
They sat in silence a moment. Burgess schemed desperately. “How about getting some sandwiches while we’re waiting?” he asked.
“You got a kitchen in the truck, ain’t you?” the fat man said in his roaring whisper.
“Groceries are cheaper across the border. I always stock up in Tijuana.”
“Then wait’ll we get to Tijuana.” The fat man said Teeawanna, making it sound like something in upper New York State. While Burgess sat there, fishing glumly for a new idea, the Cadillac pulled into the garage, very law-abidingly.
Fred slipped from behind the wheel and began passing poles and fishing gear into the back of Burgess’s truck. Two new men were shucking out of suit coats and into sports shirts. They switched snap-brim hats for baseball caps and became sportsmen. One helped Fred and the fat man change while the other passed a satchel from the Cad to the back of the truck.
The fat man reached for his arm-pit and Burgess saw the gun for the first time as it motioned him to the driver’s seat. One of the new men locked the garage door and they drove away slowly. Burgess studied what he could see o£ the darkened interior of his camper from a mirror. The barrel of the fat man’s automatic glittered and Burgess guessed he’d taken a pillow and planted himself on top of the stove. He couldn’t see the other two.
When they reached the freeway, Burgess eased off on the throttle until it backfired. He fumbled for the choke and managed to make the truck backfire twice more before the engine settled down.
Five miles later he picked up a wobbling red light in the mirror. As he was trying to think of something spectacular enough to merit a ticket, the fat man heard the siren and said, “Pull over and go slow.”
Two prowl cars and a motorcycle went by lickety-split and Burgess silently cursed the moment’s indecision that had cost him his chance.
Ten minutes later he saw the prowl cars again, parked on the American side of the gates which delineated the limits of their authority. As Burgess pulled up in line, the fat man slid the curtains shut behind the driver’s seat. Burgess rolled the window down and tried to breathe normally.
A deputy sheriff stuck his flashlight in Burgess’s face and was making up his mind whether he ought to open up the back when one of the old immigration men yelled, “Hi, Burgess! Going after the big one that got away?”
Burgess was still trying to think up an answer to tip them off without getting his own head blown off when the sheriff’s officer made up his mind and waved him on through.
An enormously mustached celador in the doorway of the Mexican customs building gave a grave nod and the truck drove under the arch. As they pounded over chuck holes in the asphalted bridge approach, Burgess diddled his toe over the accelerator and
achieved another backfire; but the Mexican officials took no note. He sweated out the Rube Goldbergish traffic lights and as they left the Agua Caliente end of town a patch of washboard road achieved what all his backfires had been unable to do. Not that it would do much good, Burgess reflected disgustedly, to have the muffler come loose in a country where police didn’t care how much noise trucks made. Then, as the road widened past the bull ring, he wondered if his passengers knew anything about Mexican police. He pulled over and stopped.
“Now what?” the fat man growled.
“You heard it,” Burgess said. “You want every cop in the country competing to write us tickets?” He reached for a tool box.
The fat man smashed the barrel of his pistol over Burgess’s knuckles. “Just a minute,” he said. Burgess waited while the big man pawed through the tools, “All right,” he said when he was sure there was no weapon.
Burgess crawled under the truck, dragging his tools after him. The muffler was old and nearly rusted through. It had slipped off the end of the exhaust pipe, allowing the truck to roar like an uninhibited hot rod. As he was forcing the muffler back on the pipe, his screwdriver went through a thin spot. Burgess took a deep breath and made a hasty decision. “Ask one of your buddies to look under the sink and get me a big potato,” he said to the fat man who was squatting beside the truck.
“What good’ll that do?” the fat man asked.
“It’ll plug a hole long enough to get out of cop range,” Burgess said. He jammed his screwdriver into a ventilator in the floorboard.
In a moment the potato was jammed into the muffler’s exit and Burgess resumed driving. He rolled the window nearly shut and leaned forward, trying to breathe the trickle of air which leaked in. They were moving around in the back of the truck, but he didn’t turn to see. After a while the movement behind him stopped.
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 7