Spacepaw

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Guess he just happened to, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the Bluffer.

  “I see,” said Bill again. There were a number of questions that were coming to his mind right now that he would like to have answered by Sweet Thing and the Bluffer—particularly by the Bluffer. But he remembered that he had unfinished business back at the village.

  “Better let me get back up in that saddle,” he said to the Bluffer now. “I’m a good three hours overdue at the forge.”

  The Bluffer stared at him in consternation, as did Sweet Thing. There was a moment of silence.

  “Why, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the Bluffer, finally, “you can’t go back there now!”

  Bill stared up at him.

  “Why not?”

  “Why? Well, because you—just can’t!” said the Bluffer in a shocked tone of voice. “Why, they’d laugh you out of town if you showed up now, Pick-and-Shovel. Here you went and set up a weight-lifting contest, and then you didn’t show up for it when the time came.”

  “But it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t there,” said Bill. Tersely, he told them about being hit on the head and brought into the woods and tied up by the Hemnoid. However, to his surprise, when he finished, the long looks on the faces of Sweet Thing and the Bluffer did not lift. The Bluffer shook his head slowly.

  “I might’ve figured it was something like that,” said the Bluffer heavily. “But it doesn’t make any difference, Pick-and-Shovel. No doubt you had a good reason for not being there on time—but the point is you didn’t show up. How’re folks to be sure you didn’t just duck out of it and make this whole story up as an excuse? I believe you, because I know something about the kind of guts you Shorties’ve got. But these Muddy Nosers aren’t going to believe you. They’ll figure you probably knew you couldn’t outlift Flat Fingers, so you just didn’t show up.”

  “Well, I’ll outlift him now,” said Bill.

  But the Bluffer still shook his head.

  “You don’t understand, Pick-and-Shovel,” he said. “Flat Fingers isn’t going to stick his neck out by agreeing to lift weights with you again. He did once and you ducked out— all right, I know it wasn’t your fault. But he’s going to be thinking—suppose he agrees to lift again, and you duck out a second time, or fall down and play sick, or something? If it happens twice in a row that you get out of it, people are going to start laughing at him for letting himself be fooled that way.”

  The Bluffer shook his head.

  “No, I wouldn’t go back to the village right now if I were you, Pick-and-Shovel,” he said. “What you and I better figure on doing is camping out here in the woods for a few days. I’ll go in and get your sword and shield made by the blacksmith—that’s business, he won’t mind making those. Then, when you’ve got these weapon things of yours, you can go and have the duel with Bone Breaker, and after you win that maybe they’ll let you back in Muddy Nose Village without falling over and rolling way down the street, laughing, every time they see you.”

  “So,” observed Bill grimly. “Barrel Belly managed to get me in bad with the villagers, after all, did he? Your rescuing me didn’t help at all, then, did it?”

  Both the postman and Sweet Thing looked uncomfortable. Sweet Thing, however, was quick to recover.

  “Well, why don’t you think of something, then?” she demanded. “You Shorties are all supposed to be so tricky and sneaky! Tricky Teacher was supposed to be so smart at thinking up things and getting around people; but where is he when She needs him? Not here, that’s where he is! Instead, you’re here, Pick-and-Shovel. So why don’t you think up something? I know why! It’s because you’re a male Shorty. She’d think of something, if She were here. I know She would. She—”

  The continued emphatic repetition of the word “She” was doing little to improve Bills temper which had already been worn rather threadbare by events. The single thought that was in his mind at the moment was that palm trees would be flourishing on the Weddell pack ice of Antartica, back on Earth, before he would let any combination of events keep him out of Muddy Nose Village. He interrupted Sweet Thing roughly.

  “All right,” he retorted. “I’ve thought of something. Let’s head for the village.”

  Chapter 13

  The Hill Bluffer still hesitated.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Pick-and-Shovel?” he asked. “Like I say, Flat Fingers won’t lift weights with you now—”

  “That’s what he thinks!” said Bill.

  The Hill Bluffer lit up suddenly.

  “You mean you figured out a way to make him?” said the Bluffer, happily. “Why didn’t you say so?” He turned on Sweet Thing. “There, how do you like that? You and your female Shorties!”

  Sweet Thing sniffed disdainfully.

  “Oh, well,” she said. “She would have thought of it right away.”

  “Climb up in the saddle, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the Hill Bluffer, ignoring this, and turning his back on Bill. “And we’ll get going.”

  Bill scaled the Bluffer’s back by means of the straps of the Dilbian’s harness, and seated himself. The three of them started back through the woods toward the village.

  As they went along, the heads of Dilbians out on the street turned to look at them, and the sounds of comments, ribald and otherwise, began to float to Bill’s ears. He held on to the straps of the Bluffer’s harness, before him, looking neither to right nor left. He noticed that Sweet Thing and the Hill Bluffer were not particularly pleased, either—even though they themselves were not the target of the jeers and catcalls that pursued them as a group. The Bluffer snorted once or twice under his breath. Sweet Thing stopped once and swung half-around, as if ready to turn back and give battle to those who were criticizing. More Jam was not to be seen, Bill noted.

  However, in due time they ran the long gauntlet of the street and arrived at the blacksmith’s property. Flat Fingers paid no attention to them as they came up. He studiously avoided looking at Bill, and only grunted in response to the greeting of the Hill Bluffer.

  “Well,” said Bill, as cheerfully as he could manage, in the Bluffer’s ear, “I’ll get down here.”

  Flat Fingers was busy at the forge, beating rather savagely upon a piece of red-hot iron. The Bluffer was seated on the bench and Sweet Thing was standing near the Bluffer. Just outside the shed where they all stood, a crowd of villagers was beginning to gather. These stood and watched; silently, but grinning widely, and obviously expecting the worst. Bill felt a return of the coldness inside him he had felt with Mula-ay. However, he smiled and turned his back on them with as much an appearance of unconcern as he could muster.

  “Well,” he said loudly to the Bluffer, ignoring the blacksmith, who had now ceased hammering and thrust the beaten piece of red-hot iron, hissing, into a dark and dirty-looking barrel of water alongside the forge, “so this is Flat Fingers’ place, is it?”

  “That’s right, Pick-and-Shovel,” replied the Bluffer curiously.

  Bill did not say anything more immediately. Instead he began to wander among the piles of wood and iron that were stacked up under the shed roof, stopping here to finger a broken candlestick—there to run his finger along the edge of a broken sword. Flat Fingers, having laid aside the piece of iron he had been working on before, now had picked up what apparently was a broken barrel hoop and was scowling at it.

  “Mighty interesting around here,” commented Bill loudly, examining the rafters of the shed overhead. They were very stout rafters indeed, made of logs and a good twelve feet in the air, well out of his reach unless he climbed up on a stack of five- and six-foot lengths of foot-diameter logs—firewood, probably—that were piled up a little distance from him. He drifted over to the logs and began to examine them. Then he turned back to Sweet Thing and pulling her head down to approximately the level of his own mouth, spoke quietly into her ear for a second. Sweet Thing went off through the crowd, followed by the curious stares of those nearby, who watched her disappear in through the front door of the
Residency. They might have gone on watching, if Bill had not started talking again and drawn their attention back to him.

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, staring at the logs. “It’s a shame I couldn’t get here in time to have that weight-lifting contest with the blacksmith.”

  “Sure was!” spoke up a voice from the crowd, producing a chorus of bass-voiced laughter.

  “Yes, a real shame,” went on Bill, ignoring the reaction and nodding at the Hill Bluffer. “It would’ve been something to see.”

  He looked over at Flat Fingers, who had moodily shoved both the broken ends of the hoop into the bed of coals at his forge and was grimly pumping the bellows attached to it.

  “Yes …” went on Bill, fingering one of the logs and trying to estimate its weight. It was about five feet long and looked as if it might weigh pretty close to a hundred pounds. The logs underneath it were similar in size, and their weight should be about the same, “An appointment like that’s an appointment. If you miss it, that’s that. I wouldn’t insult Flat Fingers by suggesting he lift weights with me now, since I already missed one chance at it.”

  “That’s playing it safe, Shorty!” boomed another voice from the observing crowd, and anew burst of laughter followed.

  “No,” said Bill thoughtfully. “That’d look like I might be trying to pull the same trick all over again. So I guess there isn’t much for me to do—” He broke off as Sweet Thing shouldered her way importantly back through the crowd, the block-and-tackle Bill had made slung over one shoulder. There was a hum of interest at the sight of her, and it; but she ignored the reaction. She came up to Bill and dumped the block-and-tackle into his arms.

  “There!” said Sweet Thing. She went over and sat down on the bench beside the Hill Bluffer, as if she had just done something remarkable to put everyone in their place. The crowd stared with interest at Bill and the block-and-tackle. Even Flat Fingers, over by the forge, shot a surreptitious glance in Bill’s direction.

  “On the other hand,” went on Bill, as if to himself, but loud enough to be heard by everyone standing around, “I suppose I could just lift something around here, anyway, and sort of leave it lying where I’ve lifted it, and maybe Flat Fingers would notice it later—and maybe he wouldn’t.”

  With these last words, thrown away in the best style of More Jam, Bill climbed up on the small pile of logs and tossed one end of the rope attached to the block-and-tackle over one of the rafters, and then tested it to see if it would slip easily. The rafter, being itself a smooth round section of log with all the bark peeled off, allowed the rope to slide around it almost as well as if it, too, was a pulley.

  Bill climbed down, took the rope at the bottom end of the block-and-tackle, and ran a loop around five of the logs. He slid the loop to their center, and tied it down tight there, with the lower block of the tackle perhaps six inches above the tie. He then secured the upper part of the block-and-tackle by a separate rope to the beam itself, and once more flung over the rafter the long, operating end of the rope running into the sheaves of the block-and-tackle.

  The crowd had quieted down and had been watching in interested silence while he went through these maneuvers. Out of the corner of his eye, Bill could see Flat Fingers, also watching.

  “Well,” he said, when he was done, “let’s see if I can lift those five pieces of wood, now.”

  He took a good grip and started to draw down upon the rope to the block-and-tackle running over the rafter overhead. The rope creaked and moved. The wooden pulleys of the block-and-tackle also creaked and whined under the strain. The rope from the pulley moved jerkily through his hands, but at first the five logs did not seem to move.

  “You got to try harder than that, Shorty!” whooped a voice from the crowd, followed by another burst of laughter— but then the laughter broke off suddenly. For, as all those who were watching could see, the tied-together bundle of logs had stirred and jerked. Abruptly, they were no longer resting on the logs below, but visibly swaying in the air, a fraction of an inch above them. A few more heaves on the rope by Bill, who was beginning to perspire, and the five logs swung obviously into the air above the pile beneath.

  There was a deep-voiced babble of amazement and approval from the group around. Leaving the logs swinging there, held by the brake in the block-and-tackle itself that prevented the line from running out again in reverse order, Bill dusted his hands and walked over to the Bluffer. The onlooker: quieted to hear what might be said.

  “What do you think, Hill Bluffer,” Bill asked conversationally. “You think a man the size of Flat Fingers could lift that?”

  The Bluffer squinted thoughtfully at the bundle of five logs.

  “Yes,” he said at last, “I’d have to say I’d think he could, Pick-and-Shovel.”

  “Well, I’ll guess I’ll have to add another log or two,” said Bill. He went back to the pile and let the bundle back down. Then he loosened the ropes about the five logs, wrestled another into position on top of them, tightened the loop, and using the block-and-tackle, proceeded to lift the heavier load. Once more he went back to the Bluffer.

  “What do you think now, Hill Bluffer?” he asked. “You think Flat Fingers could lift that much?” He spoke airily, but the back of his neck was creeping slightly with the knowledge that Flat Fingers was standing only half a dozen feet behind him, taking it all in. The closeness of the blacksmith, however, did not seem to bother the Bluffer. He took his time about once more examining the bundle of logs.

  “If you want my opinion, Pick-and-Shovel,” he said at last, judiciously, “I think the blacksmith could lift that much and—say, two more logs, as well.”

  “Would you say he could lift that much and three more logs?” asked Bill.

  The Bluffer considered.

  “Well,” he drawled finally. “I’d have to say no, I don’t think he could.”

  “Suppose I added four logs to that stack,” said Bill. “You’d be pretty sure then he wouldn’t be able to lift them?”

  “Sure I’d be sure,” said the Bluffer promptly.

  “Well, I’ll just add those other four logs on, then,” said Bill.

  He went back to the stack of logs and did so. As he took hold of the rope running over the rafter to the block-and-tackle, and began to put his weight on it, a trace of uneasiness crept into him for the first time. There was over half a ton of dead weight at the other end. The block-and-tackle might be able to lift it—but the question was, could he? For one thing, the added weight was making the friction between the rope and the rafter over which it ran a not inconsiderable item to be dealt with. At his first tug, it seemed as if the load would not move. Then—Bill remembering the fury that had been born in him back in the woods into which Mula-ay had kidnapped him. He set his teeth, wound his hands in the rope—and pulled.

  For a long second, nothing happened. Then the rope gave, first a little, then a little more. Soon he was able to change his grip and the rope began coming steadily down toward him. Still, he did not count the battle won until a sudden gasp from the crowd behind him told him that the stack of ten logs had finally swung free and clear of the pile below it, visibly into the air.

  Gratefully, he let go of the rope, and turned to look. Sure enough, the load he had just lifted showed daylight between it and the top of the log pile.

  “Well, there it is,” said Bill mildly. “I guess I did manage to lift a little bit, after all.”

  He dusted his hands together, turned back, and released the brake on the block-and-tackle. The load it was supporting fell with a crash back on to the top of the stack beneath. Bill surreptitiously locked the brake in place with a thrust of his thumb against the rachet he had provided for that purpose. Then he turned back and walked over to the bench where the Hill Bluffer was still sitting.

  “Well,” Bill said, “I guess you and I might as well be wandering back on down to the Residency. I just wanted to show what I could do if I had a mind to do it. But I can’t really expect Flat Fing
ers to go and try and lift that same weight, too. So I’ll just leave it there; and we’ll be going—” The Bluffer had gotten to his feet, and Bill had already turned toward the Residency when an angry snarl behind him turned him back.

  “Just a minute there, Pick-and-Shovel!” snapped the blacksmith. He strode over to the rope still hanging from the opposite side of the beam from which the block-and-tackle itself depended, and grasped it firmly in his two huge, furry hands.

  Then, without warning, he threw all his weight upon it. The rope twanged, suddenly taut—and alarm leaped inside Bill. The rope he had chosen was perfectly adequate to the task of lifting the load he had just lifted—otherwise it would have broken. But he knew how a rope that will not break under a steady pull will part under a sudden jerk that snaps it. For a moment, hearing the bass-viol note of the rope as it straightened out, Bill was sure that this was what had happened in Flat Fingers’ huge hands.

  But then he saw that the rope had held. Not only that, but although the great shoulder muscles under the black fur of Flat Fingers were bunching heroically, and the block-and-tackle was creaking painfully, the load was not lifting.

  The line was now as taut and straight as a bar of iron. The whole body of the blacksmith vibrated with the effort he was making. But, as the long seconds slipped away, it became obvious he was not going to be able to do it.

  A single, jeering laugh rang out from the surrounding crowd. With a speed of reflex that seemed unbelievable in one so big, Flat Fingers suddenly let go of the rope, spun around and took three long strides into the crowd, to reappear a second later dragging forward by the neck and arm a somewhat smaller, male Dilbian. Having got the other out where there was room to swing him, the blacksmith shook him like a terrier shaking a rat.

  “You want to try it, Fat Lip? You and one of your friends, together, want to try to lift it?” roared Flat Fingers.

  He let the other go, and Fat Lip staggered for a moment before gaining his feet. Then, however, licking his lips, he took a look at the rope, and turned to shout a name into the crowd.