AND so to Nick Cantrella at last, thank Heaven. Heaven had often been thanked in the colony for Nick’s arrival. He was the born leader, the inspired and unorthodox electronics man who hadn’t garnered the sheaf of degrees needed for a halfway decent job on an Earth cluttered with bargain counter Ph.D.s.
In the Colony he had signed up as a maintenance and setup man, but spent so much of his time troubleshooting that he was finally relieved of the routine part of his work. Just recently he had been promoted to chief of maintenance, purchasing and repairs of all Lab equipment. His new dignity hadn’t kept him out of trouble. He was home with a nasty chemical burn in his arm acquired far outside the line of duty.
Tony didn’t know whether he was glad or sorry Nick had missed the session with Bell and Brenner. Nick could think on his feet, but it was an even chance that Brenner’s oily sympathy and Bell’s open contempt of the Colony would have goaded him into thinking with his fists.
“Tony!” Nick yelled as he came in the door. “Gracey was here with the news. It’s the biggest thing that ever hit Sun Lake! It’ll be the making of us!”
“Let’s see the arm, Combustible,” said Tony dryly. “Medicine first, politics later.”
Nick fumed as the doctor removed the dressing and examined the site of the burn—now just a good scar, painless, non-disabling and uncomplicated, due to quick poulticing and a heavy coat of eschar.
Tony slapped Nick on the back. “Okay, Fearless,” he said. “You can go back to work. Inhale chlorine. Drop pigs of osmium on your toes. Sit on a crateful of radiophosphorus and get a buttful of geigers. Stir nitric acid with your forefinger. There’s lots of things you haven’t tried yet; maybe you’ll like them—who knows?”
“So it splashed,” Nick grinned, flexing his arm. “Damn good thing I wasn’t there this morning. I would’ve thrown those bums out. Do you realize that this is the biggest break we’ve ever had? Why, man, we should have been praying for something just like this to happen. We never would have cut the Earth tie on our own and given up luxuries like Earthside medicine. I’m glad Bell’s kicking us into it.
All we have to do is retool for OxEn.” His face glowed. “What a beautiful job that’s going to be! Those boys in the Lab can do anything—with my machinery, of course,” he added.
“You can’t do it, Nick.” Tony shook his head ruefully. “Ask any of the biochem boys. I went on the guided tour through the Kelsey plant in Louisville while I was thinking over joining the Colony. It left me footsore and limping because that plant is ten stories high and covers four city blocks. They operate more than 500 stages of concentration and refinement to roll those little pink pills out of protoculture. And the first couple of hundred stages have to be remote-control sterile. There isn’t as much glass on all of Mars as the Kelsey people had just in their protoculture tanks. It’s out, boy. Out.”
“Hell, we’ll rig up something. With all the crooks on Mars, we can make something they want and swap it for OxEn across Bell’s search cordon. Don’t worry about it, Tony. This should have happened a long time ago. On our own!”
“You’re missing something. What if we do catch a marcaine thief and the hoard and turn them over to Bell?”
NICK was thunderstruck. “You mean you think it wasn’t a frameup? One of our guys?”
“We can’t rule it out until we’ve looked.”
“Yeah, it could happen. Well, if you’ll kindly write out my medical discharge, I’ll get a majority together and put it in the form of a motion that we hold a shakedown inspection of the Colony.”
“There’s an easier way, maybe,” Tony said. “Anybody who toted that much marcaine got gowed up on the stuff, whether he knows it or not. It’s micron dust—fused ampoules are about the only thing that hold it without leakage, and this was in bulk. Also, the thief might be a regular marcaine addict as well as wanting the stuff to sell.”
“So,” Nick grinned, “we line everybody up and just see which one does this.” He went into a comedy routine of tics and twitches and strange yapping noises. “You know that won’t work,” he wound up soberly. “There isn’t any way to smell out a markie.”
“Practically no way,” Tony corrected him. “That’s why Brenner’s a trillionaire and that’s why marcaine gives stiff competition to Earthside narcotics in spite of the extra cost. The damned stuff doesn’t affect you so people notice. You become an addict, you take your belt as often as you please, and you can live in your own private sweet-dream world without anybody the wiser until—blooie!—you drop dead from failure of the cardiac node to keep your heart pumping.”
“You said practically no way,” Nick reminded him. “What’s the catch? Have you got an angle?”
“I get my electroencephalograph out and read up on the characteristic brainwave patterns of marcaine users. Then I run the e. e. g. over everybody who could possibly have carried the stuff from Brenner to here. You want to Line that up for me?”
Nick nodded glumly. “Sure,” he said, “but you won’t find any markies here. It’s a frameup, I tell you . . . Hello, honey! What are you doing home at this hour of the day? What’s all that junk for?”
TONY turned to see Marian Cantrella, Nick’s blonde and beautiful wife, pushing her way through the door, her arms full of soft white cloth, scissors, heat-sealer, and paper patterns.
“You’ll be witness, won’t you, Tony, when I testify that I only left home because he didn’t want me here?” Marian turned large violet eyes from the doctor to her husband and back again. “On second thought,” she concluded, “you’re no better than he is. Could either one of you big, strong men stop gaping and give me a hand with this stuff?”
Nick jumped up and relieved her of some of her bundles. “What’s it all about?” He fingered the fine cloth curiously.
“Baby shirts, nightgowns, and diapers,” Marian said composedly. “Are you all through pawing it?”
“Oh, for the Kandro kid.” But he didn’t relinquish the material. “Where’d the cloth come from?”
“I think they just ran it off.” Marian took the heat-sealer from him and plugged it in to the house battery to warm up. She cleared a space on the table and laid out the patterns to study. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Something wrong with it?”
“No, it’s a nice job.” He brought the bolt of cloth over to the table and spread it out, then carefully pulled a thread loose. “But they should have replaced the extrusion nozzle. See that line there—there on the side—where it looks irregular?”
Tony went over to look at the thread Nick was holding up to the light. He couldn’t see anything wrong with it, and Mariah. confessed she couldn’t, either.
“It’s there,” Nick told them. “It means a worn nozzle. But it’s not a bad job. Who did the setup?”
“For heaven’s sake!” Marian exploded. “I don’t know who did it! They handed it to me and said go home and make tiny garments, so I went!”
“Okay, baby,” Nick soothed her. “I just thought you might know.” He turned to Tony as Marian began cutting off squares from the bolt for diapers. “I don’t see how they had a machine free for it,” he fretted. “Every piece of equipment in the shop was scheduled for full time until Shipment—Well,” he stopped himself, “I guess it doesn’t matter anyhow. From here on out we can pretty much stop worrying every time we need to use a piece of the Lab for Colony goods. The days of plenty have arrived—extra underwear and new dinner plates all around.”
“Sure,” the doctor agreed sourly. “All the pajamas you want—and no OxEn. Tell me, Marian, what are the women saying about this marcaine business?”
“Same as the men, I guess.” She tested the heat-sealer on a corner of the first diaper, and turned the dial for more heat. “It’ll blow over. Even if this shipment does get held up, it’ll straighten out. Kind of a shame if we’re cordoned while the rocket’s in, though.”
SHE tried the sealer again, gave a small, satisfied grunt, then began running it deftly along the cut edge
s, leaving a smooth perfect selvedge behind.
“I was hoping we’d get a look at Douglas Graham,” she added. “‘I think he’s wonderful’.”
“Hali?” demanded Nick, starting. “Oh, the This Is man. My rival. He should be honored to be my rival.”
“What’s going on?” asked Tony. “Is lit a family joke?”
“Douglas Graham’s a national joke,” said Nick. “Now that he’s going to gunth Mars, that makes him an interplanetary joke.”
“Oh, the writer,” Tony remembered. The rocket doctor had told him last trip that Graham would be aboard the next.
“He’s wonderful,” said Marian. “I just loved This Is Eurasia. All those dictators, and the Cham of Tartary and the history, he made it sound so exciting—just like a story.”
”This Is Mars,” said Nick sonorously. “Chapter One, Page One, The Story of the Sun Lake Colony, or, A Milestone in the History of Mankind.”
“Do you think he really will write us up?” asked Marian. “I mean if that silly marcaine business doesn’t keep him away?”
“No, pet. We’ll be ignored or maybe he’ll take a few digs at us. His books run first as serials in World Welfare, and World Welfare isn’t interested in co-op colonists. It is interested in Pittco #3 over the hill, I’ll bet you, by the way Pittco advertises. He’ll probably play up all the industrial colonies as big smash-hits for free enterprises and not mention things like the Pittco red-light house.”
MARIAN’S lips tightened. “I don’t think it’s decent,” she said.
“Right,” agreed Nick soberly. “I’ll tell Madame Rose tonight. Haven’t been over for days. I’ll tell her my wife doesn’t understand me and doesn’t think her girds are decent. Want to come along and make a night of it, Tony?”
“Ump,” said Tony. If he was any judge, Marian’s sense of humor didn’t go that far.
“That’s not what I meant!” she cried indignantly. “I meant it wasn’t decent for him to hide things like that and—Oil, you’re joking! Well, I don’t believe he would do it! I’ve read his books and they’re good.”
“Have you got any of Graham’s stuff around?” Tony asked hastily. “I don’t think I ever read any.”
“I shouldn’t take time out,” said Marian, a little sulkily, “but—”
SHE put down the sealer and shooed Tony off the trunk he’d been sitting on. A considerable quantity of wool socks and underwear turned up before she hit the right level. She handed over a conventional onionskin export edition. Tony read at random:
The Cham’s black eyes met mine with a gaze hypnotic in its intensity. The corners of his mouth drew up in a smile. The Cham spoke, and the front of his plum-colored silk robe embroidered with three-toed dragons in gold and silver thread rose and fell as he gestured for emphasis.
These are the words of the man who rules over the twenty-five million souls that hold the lifeline between America’s frontier on the Yang-Tse Kian River and her allies in the Middle East: “Please convey to the people of your country my highest esteem and warmest assurances that the long peace between our nations shall never be broken without cause by me.”
The significance of this—
Tony handed the book back. “I don’t think I’ve been missing much,” he said.
“When you’ve read one, you’ve read ’em all,” Nick agreed. “All those gunthers are the same.”
Marian was still digging through the trunk, fascinated at the forgotten things she was turning up. It was surprising how little used were most of the items they had found essential to include in their limited baggage when they left Earth.
“Here’s something,” she laughed. “I used to read it back on Earth, and I thought it would be so useful here . . .”
She held out an onionskin pamphlet titled in red: The Wonders of Mars, by Red Sand Jim Granata, Interplanetary Pioneer.
“I remember standing for the longest time with an extra lipstick in one hand and this in the other, and they both weighed exactly the same, and I decided. . .” She broke out in another peal of laughter. “I decided to be practical and take this. What I wouldn’t give for that lipstick now!”
Nick took the book from her and riffled through the pages with a reminiscent smile. “It’s terrible.
Tony,” he said. “Get these chapter headings: ‘Mining for Emeralds,’ ‘Trapped in a Sandstorm’—Red Sand Jim should wish the air on Earth was as clear as the heart of a Martian sandstorm—‘Besieged by Brownies in the Rimrock Hills.’ ”
“What?” demanded the doctor, incredulously.
“ ‘Besieged by Brownies in the Rimrock Hills.’ If you don’t believe me, look. The Brownies, it says here, were a constant menace to intrepid interplanetary pioneers like Red Sand Jim because they killed people and stole their babies and things like that. They didn’t often see one—”
“Naturally.”
“NATURALLY, Doctor, naturally. But they were little people who didn’t wear shoes or clothes, it says here—which reminds me.” He closed the book. “I was out at the caves yesterday—took a ride with one of the prospectors. We’ve never really looked into the caves, and I had nothing better to do while you were teaching me safety precautions, so I wandered around some, and found kids’ footprints in the entrance to one of them.”
“They take the goats out there to graze sometimes,” Tony said.
“That’s not it. Looks like they’ve been going barefoot, and I don’t think they ought to be allowed—”
“They certainly shouldn’t!” Marian was indignant. “Why, they could hurt themselves. And they shouldn’t be allowed in those caves either.”
“They’re not,” Tony said grimly. “They have strict orders to stay away from the caves. But I never thought they’d be screwy enough to try going barefoot. I’ll have to tell them about it.”
“Tell them good,” Nick urged him. “There’s a lot of rock out there, and a lot of dangerous surface salts.”
“I wish I knew some way to make it stick,” the doctor said, worriedly. “Once those kids get a notion in their heads—if they still hang around the caves after listening to old man Learoyd’s horror stories—I don’t know.”
“Don’t take it so hard.” Nick couldn’t stay serious long. “Maybe it wasn’t the kids. Could be it’s Brownies.”
“Very funny. I’ll pass the word to the mothers that there shouldn’t be any barefoot boy stuff on Mars. I’ve got enough trouble without frostbitten toes, lacerations and mineral poisoning.”
“You better hope they’re Brownie-prints, Tony. That’d be easier to handle than teaching our pack of kids.”
“Look who’s talking! I’ll thank you to line up that vote on an e.e.g. test for marcaine now while I dig up my medical references. Also—” he got up briskly—“if there’s more trouble coming, I better take care of myself while I can.
Lunch’ll be all gone if I don’t get there soon.”
Tony had small zest for the communal meals shared by most of the unmarried members of the settlement. Pooling rations and taking turns at the work did make it easier to get decent meals; but the atmosphere was, inevitably, one of noisy good-fellowship. The doctor would have preferred a quieter and more restful arrangement. He thought wistfully for a moment of the comradeship that existed between Nick and his wife. On second thought, it would hardly be worth it, having to get married in order to have his meals at home.
CHAPTER SIX
FORTY years in the life of a planet is nothing at all, especially when the planet is ancient Mars. It had been that long since the first Earth rocket had crashed at the southern apex of Syrtis Major—and remained there, a shining, rustless memorial with only the broad fractures in its fuel tanks to tell its story to those who came after.
Forty years, almost, since the first too-hopeful colonists followed, three thousand doomed souls. Their Earth-bred bodies, less durable than the flimsiest of their constructions, were already rotted to the skeletons when a belated relief ship came with the supplies witho
ut which they had starved to death.
Forty years, now, of slow growth but rapid change, during which a barren world had played host to, successively, a handful of explorers; a few score prospectors and wanderers-at-large; a thousand or so latter-day homesteaders, with their lean, silent women; and finally—after OxEn—the new industrial colonies, none of them more than five years old.
The explorers had disappeared: gone back to Earth to lecture and write, or blended completely into the Martian scene; the prospectors and frontiersmen, most of them, had died; but the colonists, determined to stay on, drew fresh blood continually from the lifeline at Marsport—the quarterly rockets from Earth.
Sun Lake City Colony, alone among those who had come to Mars, wanted nothing more than to cut, once and for ever, that vital tie with Earth. But it was too soon, still too soon; the Colony was not yet strong enough to live, if the umbilical cord were severed.
And the colonists knew it. After lunch they gathered in the Lab, every last man, woman, and child. Tony rose from the black box of the electroencephalograph to count heads.
“We’re one over,” he told Nick. “Polly’s in the hospital, Joan’s home. Hank’s at Mars Machine Tool or on his way back. Tad’s on radio shack. Who’s the spare?”
“Learoyd,” said Nick. “And I’ve got Tad messaging Machine Tool to confirm Hank’s whereabouts for the last four days.”
“Okay. I’ll get Tad later.”
A whiskery man who looked as though he was pushing 90 stormed up to the doctor.
“It ain’t your business whether I take a sniff of marcaine now and again and it ain’t for you to say I stole any hundred kilos if you do find I use it once in a way. Bunch of greeners!”
Collected Short Fiction Page 110
