The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Trixie listened to Ebb’s slow easy breathing. No change. She tried again. “Ebbtide, if I was some girls you know, instead of just Trixie Green that works in the Chaw-Chaw Cafe, you’d take me back, wouldn’t you?”

  “Nope,” said Ebbtide. “Not that I know of. Girls is all the same to me.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest.”

  The sun slipped over the horizon and everything went dark. Except the floating meteoroids that were drifting in from outer space. They were lighted up like a host of moons.

  “It’s turned night!” Trixie gasped. “Gee, it’s beautiful. All those moons.”

  “Like ’em? I’ll make you some more.”

  Ebbtide picked up some small spherical stones and hurled them out into space far enough to catch the sun’s gleam. Yellow ones and green ones. They oozed out like toy balloons.

  “Here goes a red one,” said Ebbtide. It caught the sun and glowed like a bloodstone floating across black velvet.

  “Gee, it’s romantic.” Through the radio the girl’s voice was like the poetry hour. “You never see nights like’ this back on the earth. It’d be a wonderful place to make love, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I never made love,” said Ebbtide.

  “I’m going to stay out all night and watch. Don’t let me keep you up, Mr. Jones, if you want to go home and go to bed.”

  “If I went to bed every night here, I wouldn’t get anything else done,” Ebbtide grinned. “Is this the first night you’ve seen? Where you been the last three hours?”

  “Asleep,” the girl answered.

  “You’ve slept through six nights and six days.”

  “No! Not really!”

  “Uh-huh. They’re only fifteen minutes each here on Jones. One earth hour is two days and two nights, roughly. So you get about fifty days here to one earth day.”

  They watched the varicolored moons swinging and bumping and turning black as they fell out of the sun’s rays. Soon day broke again.

  “That was grand!” the girl exulted. “Little Trixie Green could just sit and watch those moons and stars forever.”

  “If you like it so well,” said Ebbtide, “you can walk along with it and stay in the night all the time. You can circumnavigate this globe in thirty minutes. I’ve fixed paths and ropes to hang onto all the way around.”

  Trixie was still breathing poetry. “Couldn’t you just sit and watch it forever, Ebbtide?”

  “No,” said Ebbtide, “not unless there was a wreckage driftin’ in.”

  “You aren’t a bit romantic. But I am, and when you go back to earth and leave me here, I’ll just go on watching these pretty moons forever.”

  Ebbtide shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause some day this little sky ball’s gonna shake apart. When the big planets get farther around, this gravity

  pocket’ll melt like a hailstone in hot water and everything’ll slide outward.”

  “Gosh! Where’ll we be then?”

  “I’ll be on my way back to earth on Stan Kendrick’s space boat. Me and my salvage. Most likely you’ll be takin’ a swell ride through the universe.” Trixie Green’s poetic manner vanished. “Ob, no. No, not me. I’ve had all the riding across the universe I want. I’m full up on universe. Space riding’s all right if you like it, but check me out. Too far between hamburger stands.” A gleaming helmet came swirling down out of the sky and Ebbtide hooked it. It was a twin for Trixie Gireen’s.

  Ebbtide Jones looked grim as he examined the helmet. “This fellow Checkers—” he began.

  “Check Checkerton,” Trixie corrected.

  “Did he carry any extra helmets that you know of?”

  “He had a couple of cases of them—why?”

  “’Cause I been lookin’—” he started to say. Then he said, “’Cause if he wanted to throw out something so he could take after it and follow where it went—this helmet would be about the right thing to throw.”

  “Oh!” said Trixie.

  “Yeah,” Jones agreed. “I don’t know when, but my hunch is that it’s going to break soon. Maybe you can stick around and keep fishing while I go over my books.”

  But three more of the swift nights passed, and then Trixie fished out two things that excited her. She got them and leaped and tumbled to the shack to place them in Ebbtide’s hands—two more chromium-bright helmets.

  Ebbtide came into the space shack, hung up his helmet, and donned his purple and gold military cap. He was frowning.

  “False wind,” he said, referring to the helmets. “I’ve been watchin’ for the last ten days, and not a sign of your Check. Then again, I don’t like the feel of the island much.”

  “Ten—oh, you mean ten Jones days. Say, Ebb—”

  The girl was in the further room of the shack, which was a complete space ship kitchen that had once floated in intact.

  “What’s the smell in this place, Ebb? Something dead?”

  “You mean that cheese I’m thawing out? It sailed in frozen like an iceberg a few months back. Jones months.”

  “I’d say it’s plenty thawed,” said Trixie. She found the box of cheese and pried the lid off. “Want to eat it?” Ebbtide shook his head. He was particular about eating his cheese with pie, he said, and So far no pies had drifted in. Food galore, but no pie.

  “I’ll make a pie,” said Trixie, and she went to work. “It’ll be a lemon pie. There’s lemons and lard and flour here, and everything I need. You like lemon pie, Ebbtide?”

  The girl felt a string tighten at her throat and turned to find the monarch space comber marking up the tag that hung around her neck. From $3.50 to $23.50.

  For a moment, Ebbtide’s smiling eyes met hers, and he was surprised to see how clear they were, and how deep. But he turned away and said nothing. He sat at the window to keep watch on the starry landscape—or skyscape, as he called it. But when the savory odors of lemon pie crept over to him—pie, the rarest of delicacies on the planet JONES—Ebbtide grinned and went for a new price tag. And when at last he sank his teeth into the finished product, he plunged like a Wall Street investor: he wrote, in large black numerals—$69.75.

  The girl’s blue eyes beamed. “Now do I go back to Earth with you when you—”

  “No,” said Ebbtide, munching his pie contentedly.

  “Why not?”

  Jones hesitated a fraction of a second. “No room. Like I told you, you’re too bulky for your value.”

  “Me bulky? Little Trixie Green too hefty? You can’t tell me that!” Her eyes flashed with anger now. Ebbtide’s gaze roved over her lithe form.

  “I got a chest of jewels no bigger’n you,” he said, “that’s worth millions of dollars. Nope, you don’t go. Just your space suit and your jewelry and maybe your hair, if you like.”

  “You’ll have a sweet time getting my hair!” She tossed her head defiantly.

  “I’ll get it the next time you sleep,” he said, helping himself to another piece of pie and a liberal quantity of cheese.

  “Then I won’t sleep any more,” she snapped.

  “If I can depend on that,” said Ebbtide, “I’ll send you out to keep watch on the skies.”

  The girl straightened up her kitchen in silence. She refilled Ebbtide’s plate with pie and cheese, then placed her elbows and nose against a window and contemplated the skyscape.

  “If he does come,” she said, and the same shudder was in her voice that always came when she spoke of Check Checkerton, “and if he tries to kidnap me again, what would you do, Ebbtide?”

  “Depends . . .” said Jones. “Now you goin’ out to watch for me?”

  “Yes, I’m going.”

  Ebbtide awakened to a soft purring voice.

  “Ebbtide.” The girl stroked his sleeve. “I’ve been keeping watch on the skies for you, Ebbtide.”

  The space comber groaned and demanded to know whether anything had happened.

  “Yes, lots,�
�� said the girl in her most poetic tone. “The nicest nights and the brightest stars. But Ebbtide, won’t you come out and make some more moons for me?”

  A little patient cajoling and the lanky space comber yielded to the girl’s request. They trailed along the equatorial path, walking lightly and clinging to the ropes and rails. Trixie’s voice chattered musically through the radios.

  “It must be wonderful being a beach comber and a space comber. Always on the lookout for the next surprise package. Gee, I think it’s thrilling. I wish I could be a comber too, Ebbtide.”

  “Us combers usually work by ourselves. Sure, we got an organization and we’re kinda scientific, but the way I figure, I ain’t takin’ on no more partners.”

  Ebbtide settled down among a clump of rounded meteoroids. He gathered up one of them, a barrel-sized ball, and pushed it out into space. The planet rotated into night, and the gliding ball could be seen as a silvery crescent.

  “I’ve been having some wonderful thoughts, Ebbtide,” said the girl, settling down near him. “How we could make this the grandest planet. You’d be the king of it, and everybody’d do whatever you tell them. Gee, you’d be grand!”

  “What do you mean, everybody?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking—how long are we going to be here?”

  “Maybe another Earth month. Maybe even a year,” said Ebbtide. “Though it don’t feel so steady. Still, Kendrick, the guy that’s comin’ after me, can tell from his figures. He’ll leave me as long as it’s safe.”

  “And it might be safe a whole Earth year?”

  “Maybe. As long as things are failin’ in instead of failin’ out, there’s plenty of time.”

  “Gee,” the girl breathed. “Then it ought to work.”

  “What?”

  “Why you could have a whole kingdom of space combers for your own. A whole tribe.”

  “How?” Ebbtide kicked another potential moon up through the blackness. When the sunlight caught it, it was sparkling gold. It reminded Ebbtide of a king’s crown. “How could I have a whole kingdom?”

  “Well,” said Trixie, taking a deep excited breath, “say we’re to be here an Earth year—you and me. Well, for every Earth day we get fifty days, because things happen fast here.”

  “Faster’n hungry sharks.”

  “All right, then for every year we get fifty years—and in fifty years you could have children and grandchildren—a whole tribe of space combers—all looking up to you as—”

  “Hold on there, not so fast. What kind of a hurricane is this?” Ebbtide started to reach for his notebook with a vague feeling that this deluge of figures ought to be checked on paper. But it was still a few minutes until daylight. He tried to scratch his head but his space helmet interfered.

  “You could be king instead of President, so you could make all the laws you need, to make Jones a great planet. And if you pass a law that we get married—”

  “Grandchildren,” Ebbtide mumbled, “a whole tribe . . . Great spoutin’ whales. And me the king of JONES.”

  A long silence. The sun peaked over, the planet rotated into high noon and on toward evening. Ebbtide scarcely moved. He lay with his hands locked behind his head and his long legs propped over a rock, staring into the void as if he had forgot the girl was watching him, except that now and again he turned to look at her furtively.

  “Nope,” he said finally. “It don’t figure out.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it don’t. Now take me, I’ve got beach comber in my blood from way back. That’s why I’m where I am today. But if I was to marry you—nope, it’s too risky. Those grandchildren might turn against space combin’. They might want to take up counterfeitin’ or politics or singin’ or preachin’—and then I’d have to shoot ’em to save the family reputation.”

  “Wait a minute!” the girl cried. “You aren’t the only one that’s got heredity. My dad was a second-hand dealer—”

  “Huh?”

  “From a long line of second-hand dealers. And that’s not so different from collecting sea salvage. So there!”

  “Another thing,” said Ebbtide, as they turned into the night. “How’d you have that time business figured out?”

  “Well, if every hour is two days,” said the girl in sing-song, “and every day is fifty days, and every year is fifty years—and if Ebbtide Jones and little Trixie Green are going to be here fifty years—”

  “Hold the hurricane!” Ebbtide interrupted. “I said it might be not even a month. It might just be—”

  His words died. He was staring at the moon, the silvery one he had tossed out the day before. The girl saw it too. Instead of floating back it seemed to hang there, eighty or a hundred yards out. If anything, it was drifting away slowly.

  Then the golden moon came into view. It was definitely moving—outward!

  Ebbtide sprang to his feet. A stone that he kicked up floated up past his shoulder.

  “Where you going?” the girl cried.

  “Gather things.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Yeah,” Ebbtide retorted. “Don’t take your helmet off. Ain’t safe the way the shack’s starting to leak. Go to the cabin and sleep. I’ll be in to clip your hair in a few minutes.”

  And still there was no sign of Stan Kendrick’s space boat.

  In a few minutes, meteoroids and floating trash piles brightened the space around the planet JONES. The gravitational whirlpool was slowly slipping into reverse, and little by little its substance would break away and follow other gravitational paths.

  Ebbtide’s stacked rows of salvage strained silently at their hitches. A squat space-cannon snapped a rope and wafted upward. By the time Ebbtide noticed, the weapon was beyond his fishing line. The network of ropes around the frail, mongrel planet’s equator was holding as an anchor, but its endurance was limited. And Jones didn’t know the limit.

  Holding firmly to the ropes, he plodded around his little world several times. He didn’t know whether to feel more or less anxiety as the void remained empty. There were two ships he was expecting now . . .

  A shadow crossed the corner of Ebbtide’s vision. He spun about quickly to see a space flivver glide past in the weak eddies of the pool. Jones adjusted his helmet and walked down to meet the newcomer.

  When the flivver landed, a husky man of Ebbtide’s own lean height clambered out. He clutched at the ropes and railings and fiddled with his earphones, trying to tune in to Jones. When he hit, Jones spoke up: “You come just in time for a clean-up sale. Lease is expirin’ any minute now and I got some of the hottest bargains in the system.”

  “Any whiskey?” the stranger asked. “All you want,” said Ebbtide, pointing to a huge pile of bottled stock in tempo-conditioned cases. He thought he knew this stranger.

  “You underestimate me, buddy. How much for the lot?”

  The customer seemed to be a good one, and ripe for business. He bought the whole supply of liquor, all the firearms, and large quantities of food, oxygen and fuel. He looked about, this way and that, as if—

  “Somethin’ else?” said Ebbtide. “There might be,” said the customer. His roving eyes kept returning to the space shack. Bloodshot eyes, Ebb noticed, scrutinizing the stranger’s visor. Where had he seen him before?

  “Nice line of uniforms you got there,” said the stranger, idly. “They all float in dead?”

  “The twelve Zandonian cops did,” said Ebbtide. “The three spacemen’s suits was still kickin’ when I yanked ’em off. Case of three tough guys.” The husky customer looked the lanky Ebbtide over from head to foot. “You’re pretty tough yourself, huh?”

  “Enough,” said Ebbtide. “Anything else you want?”

  “Yeah. Got any new space helmets on hand?”

  “No,” said Ebbtide.

  “No?” The stranger leaned forward a moment. “Wouldn’t happen to have a girl around, would you? Somebody with a couple of my helmets?”

  “No.”

  The hu
sky stranger looked around the circular horizon. “Then I figure maybe there’d be a corpse lyin’ around on the other side of this ball of rocks somewhere.”

  “I’ve combed every inch of this planet for everything,” said Ebbtide.

  “Yeah? I think I’ll take a look around.”

  No sooner had the stranger disappeared down the equatorial path than the lights in the space shack flashed on. Ebbtide clambered for the air locks as fast as he could go. It was perilous going.

  More perilous for Ebbtide than for the other. For Ebbtide had developed fixed habits of leaping along over the paths, knowing that the gravity would pull him back down. This sudden reverse in gravitational forces checked him at every move.

  At the entrance to the air locks Ebbtide met Trixie coming out. Ebbtide seized the girl by the wrist and pulled her back into the cabin.

  “Hey,” she said, “it’s him—Check Checkerton!”

  “I know. Now get back in the shack and lay low. Go to sleep. This might be worth a lot of money to me.”

  The girl was defiant. “If you think little Trixie Green is going to pretend she’s asleep while you—”

  “Listen, shark bait,” said Ebbtide, “I’m gonna tell you somethin’ an’ you’ve gotta do like I tell you, see!” Ebbtide turned off the lights. There was sufficient light from the outward-bound moons for the girl to give him a suspicious look through her visor. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Breathe deep,” said Ebbtide. He was perched behind her, and he reached his arms through hers. “Breathe again . . .”

  On the last count his arm pressed down to cut off the deep breathing as before, and he started to carry her sleeping form to the farther room. But Trixie Green was not asleep. Her arms caught him around the head and she looked into his visor. She was breathing audibly.

  “Gee, Ebbtide, you’re strong. The way you manhandled me, you must be in love with me. You must be!”

  “What th’ snappin’ turtles—”

  “And I love you too, Ebbtide!” There was just enough sunlight sifting in by this time to reveal the third figure as a dark shadow entering from the air locks. Too late Ebbtide realized that his recent conversation with Trixie had carried to Check’s radio as well.