by Don Wilcox
“Got no women, huh!” Checkerton barked. “Well, if it ain’t my little waitress! I been lookin’for you. I’ve got a reserved seat waitin’ out here in my flivver.”
“She’s my property,” Ebbtide said quietly. “She floated in.”
“Then I’ll buy her,” said Checkerton. His eyes were on the price tag around the girl’s neck. “I’ve got no more use for money. I’ve got plenty of use for company. Here’s your price.”
“The price is two thousand,” said Ebbtide.
“The sign says something else.”
“It’s a misprint. Two thousand cash.”
“It’s a deal.” Checkerton produced two thousand dollars in bills. Ebbtide Jones slapped it down.
“Changed my mind again,” said Jones. “No sale.”
He had remembered the stranger, after all.
Ebbtide slapped the money down, relatively speaking. It fell and scattered over the ceiling—upon which the three figures were now standing. The space shack was like a cabin hanging from the underside of a huge wobbly balloon.
Check Checkerton scowled through his visor. Ebbtide met his glare. Trixie Green held her breath.
Then Checkerton bent to the ceiling on which he stood, and his fingers swept up the bills.
“It’s no skin off my back,” the husky man growled. “If you don’t want to sell her—” he stuffed the bills into a pocket and came up with a gun—“I’ll take her as a gift!”
He waved the gun barrel in Ebbtide’s face. It gleamed menacingly—and expensively. Ebbtide wondered how much it was worth—and how easy it went off. Suddenly he twisted to one side, and the cabin swung with him, shakily.
“Look out!” Ebbtide yelled. “She’s goin’ !”
Sudden alarm peered from the goggled eyes of the stranger. He rolled with the shack and then suddenly cast himself in the opposite direction, as if to balance it. At that moment, Jones came flying back across the room and crashed into Checkerton. His right hand swung up to Checkerton’s jaw, and his left hammered the other’s right hand. With a cry of pain that echoed through their receivers, Ebbtide and the girl saw Checkerton drop the gun—
Drop? It didn’t drop at all. It merely hung in air a moment and then began to float away. It hit the ceiling and lay there against it. With a surge, Checkerton flung himself to the ceiling—and there was Trixie Green, jumping after him!
Together they hit the ceiling of the shaky hut with a heavy impact, and Jones, several feet below, saw the beams give, then part, then begin to head slowly into space.
At that moment, Jones lost interest in the fight for the gun. The Zandonian treasure chest was lifting and floating leisurely out of the door which had wrenched open. The little air that had been left in the shack rushed out with celerity enough to make a breeze, pushing the chest even faster. The breeze was acting as a current in a placid stream.
With a whoop, Ebbtide Jones braced himself against the floor and jumped out of the shack. In his earphones he could hear the girl and Checkerton howling about something, but he was busy. He floated chin-first to the heaving ground outside, looked wildly about for his fishing pole and lunged for it as it floated up to him. Then, running along the snaking walk, he was after the chest.
The chest, with a mind of its own, was making off in the general direction of Sirius when the hook on the fishing line nipped its handle. Jones was sweating rivers by then. He threw a short loop of rope around it, tied it to the lines of the walk, talking to himself. “That’ll hold as long as there’s a planet here, an’ if that ain’t goin’ to be for awhile, it won’t make any difference—where I’ll be.”
“Ebbtide!” came a scream in his earphones. “What are you talking about? This ape’s got me and he’s—oo-ooof!”
“I’m comin’ !” said Ebbtide into his speaker. “An’ you better turn your earphones off. You shouldn’t be listenin’ to the kind of talk that’s comin’ from that guy.”
Running along the planking, Jones saw Checkerton and the girl ahead of him, heading for the space flivver. The little hybrid planet was shaking now as if it had an ache in its middle, and the going was tough.
And now, suddenly, the space flivver was lifting by itself. Its nose swung about and the bow lifted, and it began to head up into space. A series of oaths ripped through Jones’ earphones, and as he ran toward the two, he saw Checkerton crouch.
The next instant the man had leaped toward the ship, dragging Trixie Green with him by the hand. He barely caught the outside rail of the flivver and he held on. Behind him, the girl was gyrating and kicking, and so, for the moment, the man, the girl and the flivver began to move out in a threesome.
That was when Jones saw the battered nose of Stan Kendrick’s boat coming butting in. It heartened Jones somewhat, but he still had his work cut out for him. “Won’t have space unless I hold him till Stan gets here,” he muttered. “And I got to hold him.” And with that, he swung the fishing pole and then threw the line. The hook flashed out—and caught Trixie Green in the seat of her pants. “Must have disconnected her speaker,” Jones observed, when no responding howl greeted his efforts.
Now he began to pull the catch in. It was strenuous work. The flivver was pulling out and Jones working his line in. Suddenly Checkerton turned around and took in the scene. Abruptly he let go of the girl’s hand and concentrated both hands on the flivver’s rail.
Before Ebbtide could cry out, Trixie had lunged and caught Checkerton’s foot. And she wouldn’t let go. Checkerton thrashed and spun, but the grip on his leg wouldn’t give. He let go one arm and tried to reach the girl with his free hand. The flivver lurched about wildly before he lost it altogether.
So it was that Ebbtide Jones, bent almost in half, and relieved only at the end by Stan Kendrick, pulled in the three of them. By then he had taken Kendrick’s gun from him and was pointing it at Checkerton.
Trixie Green disengaged herself from the hook and scurried off to the remains of the shack. When Jones and Kendrick, leading Checkerton, reached there, they found her holding together a dozen odds and ends that were on the point of departing. She flipped in her receiver. “Let’s start loading and get out of here,” she said, her eyes bright with excitement.
“Gee,” said Trixie, shaking her hair into place as she took off the helmet, “what a lot of moons. All of them taking off for another ride.” She looked out of a porthole in Kendrick’s boat. “I guess that’s the end of JONES,” she added sadly.
“How’s the flivver ridin’ ?” Ebbtide called out.
Stan Kendrick came forward to him. “Snug as a bug,” he grinned. “I got it towing along as nice as you please. I only hope that Checkerton doesn’t get loose back there.”
“He won’t,” said Trixie. “Not the way I tied him up.”
“Mind telling me what this was all about?” said Kendrick. “I never saw so much action for strange reasons in my life.”
“Yeah,” Jones grinned, facing the girl. “What made you hold on to that Check friend of yours?”
“You had your speaker on, didn’t you?” she countered. “The way you kept talking to yourself, I knew you wanted him for something, so I held on. But what?”
“Salvage,” said Jones.
“You mean the way you’re using that flivver to haul a lot of this stuff?” said Kendrick. “Fast thinking. The way that planet went to pieces we’d never have been able to take everything on this trip.”
“Well,” Ebbtide drawled, “partly that. And partly the fact that this Checkerton guy has a price tag on him. There’s a reward out for his capture.”
“Holy Jupiter!” Kendrick exclaimed. “What’s this? And how in the name of sixteen Mercurian saints do you know so much of what’s going on where you’re stuck away out in nowhere?”
“Salvage,” said Ebbtide. “Couple of months ago—JONES months, I mean—our organization—”
“What organization?” Trixie asked.
“Salvagers and junk-men, of course. I been tellin’ you that
this kind of business is a science these days. Anyways, the organization got out a bulletin to all of us tellin’ about how there’d been a robbery in one of the Spaceways department stores. That meant we could expect some stuff to be comin’ in from guys who wanted to use us as fences—you know, places they could sell it. ’Course, that ain’t allowed. Well, when I see a guy that’s got helmets enough to throw around for guide markers, and all he’d got is a flivver, that adds up.”
“But how do you know there’s a reward out for him?” Kendrick asked.
“On account I was stuck once before. Couple of years ago—JONES years, I mean—somebody dropped in on me and sold me a lot of oxygen tanks. Good buy, too. Well, Stan, you remember what happened to them tanks. The government confiscated ’em, and said there was a cash money reward waitin’ for the guy who had stolen ’em in the first place. An’ that was the same guy, only I couldn’t remember right off. Not till he flashed them bills, wantin’ to buy Trixie.”
“What do you mean—buy Trixie?” said Kendrick, sitting down.
“That part of it’s a long story. But the bills—they was the same ones I’d used to pay him. They look all right, till you examine them. Then you kind of notice that they’re JONES money, an’ they ain’t no good off that planet. ’Course, as President of the planet, I had a right to print my own currency, an’ it kind of kept the trade comin’ back.”
“Comin’ back?” Trixie cried. “I brought him and I held on to him, even though that hook was hurting my feelings—and I’m getting half of that reward I And what did you mean by goin’ after the treasure chest when that lug was choking the life out of me on the ceiling?”
“Gee,” Jones said, looking through a porthole. “I guess you’re right about them moons lookin’ so nice. What’s that? The chest? Well, I figured any girl that goes divin’ after guns is goin’ to be able to take care of herself—and that chest is valuable.”
“Well, so am I!” howled Trixie. “And you’re goin’ to realize that when I get half the reward.”
“I been thinkin’ about that.”
“H-m-m-m.”
“Say, Stan, would you mind leavin’ us alone for a minute? You could kind of see how that flivver is comin’ along. Got quite a load in there.”
Ebbtide Jones looked out the window again. “Them moons, Trixie,” he muttered. “Guess I owe you somethin’ for pointin’ out how nice they really look.”
“You were sayin’ ?” she said icily. “Well, I been thinkin’ it’d be a shame to split that reward up. Probably won’t be much anyhow.”
“Why you—”
“Hold on now. First thing you gotta learn is don’t say nothin’ until you’re sure the last offer’s been made. I also been thinkin’ about how your Dad was a second-hand man in a way, an’ maybe a family of second-hand men might—“Oh, Ebbtide.”
“Hey, wait a minute. Hold on, now. Stan’ll see us, an’ you’re getting that lipstick all over me . . . Anyway, how so you know I ain’t still after your hair?” When Stan Kendrick came back a few minutes later, he saw Jones and Trixie Green sitting contentedly by the porthole, watching a rather large and greenish meteoroid moon sail by in the velvet heavens. The mystery of the price tag on Trixie’s neck, the one which said: $7.50, then $3.50, then $23.50, then $69.75—the mystery was solved.
There was a last large notation on it, in Ebbtide Jones’ careful hand. It said: SOLD.
[*] Ebbtide Jones was sole proprietor and lord of his “Whirlpool in Space”. (See Amazing Stories, November, 1939.) The pool was the meeting place of several eddies in space. Since all the debris in the surrounding thousands of interstellar space came together here, in time a shifting island in space was formed. Some of the island was actual soil, gravel, rock, but much of it was odds and ends of junk—metal plates, tube lights, space suits, etc.
MYSTERY OF THE MIND MACHINE
First published in Amazing Stories, August 1940
Not only could this machine read minds—it could read the future!
CHAPTER I
The usual order, Miss White?” asked the brisk young pharmacist.
The girl answered with a nod, a flick of her pretty eyelashes, and a smile that was at once generous and mysterious. Bill Taylor told himself that he should get better acquainted.
Then Maurine White’s expression changed. A heavy-jawed man came up to stand beside her, and the frozen squint of his right eye upon her made her shrink.
Bill Taylor had seen the squint-eyed man before. He recognized the pocket-soiled purple paper that the big man passed across the prescription counter with a brusque:
“Here—and make it snappy!”
“Like a flash!” Bill Taylor answered, with mental reservations.
Both of these orders were as clear in Bill Taylor’s mind as H.O. Neither was anything any physician had ever prescribed. The one on the purple paper was a curious mixture of powdered soaps and powdered metals. What its purpose might be was an unsolved formula among Bill Taylor’s mental storehouse of mysteries. If he ever got to be a secret service officer, he’d look into things like this. To be a U. S. secret service officer was Bill Taylor’s secret ambition.
The young pharmacist went into the prescription room and began work on the two orders. Then he stopped and listened, and his lips tightened.
“You work for that high-powered artist, Steinbock, don’t you?” the squint-eyed man said in a tone that was more accusation than question.
“I’m his pupil,” the girl replied, tapping her fingers on the counter.
Her nervous mannerism did not escape Bill Taylor’s observing eye. Through the small prescription window he watched with interest. In his mental storehouse of mysteries this lovely girl occupied an important niche. Why did she shy away from discussing the master artist, Steinbock, with whom she worked?
The big squint-eyed man put his questions bluntly.
“Tell me, where does Steinbock get this new yellowish coloring material that the art critics rave about?”
“No one seems to know.” The girl’s cryptic answer was meant to be final. The glossy black hair that floated over her shoulders shook uncomfortably.
“Of course you wouldn’t tell, even if you knew,” the squint-eyed man sneered. He edged closer to her. “Is the old devil as bad as they say he is?”
Maurine White preferred not to hear.
“Is he?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what the newspapers say! Steinbock’s a temperamental demon who chases around the country spouting off about art and insulting everybody’s tastes—”
“They buy his pictures,” said the girl staunchly.
“Since he invented that new color—yes! But how do you put up with his nasty temper?”
Maurine White’s face flushed with rage. Bill Taylor dashed back to the counter, his eyes ablaze, his fists doubled white.
“Laubmann!”
The big man turned sharply, surprised at being called by name. He had never given the young pharmacist a second look before. What he saw now was snapping blue eyes, straight athletic build, doubled fists trembling slightly at the sides of the youngster’s apron.
“What’s the matter here?” Taylor barked.
The squint-eyed man seemed lost for an answer. He snarled something unintelligible, but the young pharmacist cut him off.
“You can wait over in that refreshment booth by the wall. I’ll call you when your order’s ready.”
Laubmann backed away and seated himself with a glower. But a moment later when Bill Taylor had returned to his work, the big man sauntered back to the prescription counter and resumed his talk in a low confidential tone.
“Listen, beautiful, I happen to know that this million-dollar yellow pigment, whatever it is, has got the art boys all standing up on their hind legs hollering. And I’ll bet a grand that you, young lady, know exactly what that yellow’s made of.
“Why don’t you get wise to yourself? You don’t have to lick old Steinb
ock’s dirty boots all your life. Cut in on it and make yourself a wad of dough, before it’s too late. I’ll make you an offer right here and now. You dig up the secret for me and I’ll—”
“No, thanks! Why? Are you an artist?”
The big man grinned. “In my line—yes. When I see a million dollars running around loose, you’re damned right I’m an artist! If one stroke don’t do it, another will. For the last time, are you in with me or out?”
Laubmann lit a cigarette while he waited for an answer. He didn’t see the exchange of glances that passed through the window of the prescription room.
“Out,” said the girl sharply.
Laubmann laughed coldly. “I can’t figure what kind of a choke hold that devil Steinbock has got on you . . . But I’ve got a very neat way of finding out—a little trick of science—and when I do, that’ll be all I need.” He muttered, as if to himself, “ ‘Fascinello, the million dollar yellow.’ That’s what he calls it.”
A moment later the blond young pharmacist returned to the counter.
“Here’s your order, Mr. Laubmann.”
The squint-eyed man took the large package and paid for it; then he shot a glance at the coin in the girl’s hand. He flung down another coin. Then with a quick movement he snatched the smaller package that Bill Taylor was handing to the girl.
“Wait! That’s not yours,” Taylor snapped.
“Make her up another!” the squint-eyed man snarled. “I’ll take this one!”
“Here! You can’t—”
“Can’t I? Why not? I paid for it!”
Laubmann’s heavy arm flew out to hurl the pharmacist back against the steel counter. Then the big man made a swift exit by a side door.
Maurine White caught her breath, but before she could cry for help, Bill Taylor’s hand cupped over her mouth.
“Let him go!” Taylor snapped.
“But—but he’s got my—” she choked.
“Nothing of the sort,” the pharmacist retorted. “All he got was a package of pure sulphur.”
