Grotto of the Dancing Deer

by Clifford D. Simak

  “What happened to the plants after Dr. Hansler died?” Bob asked.

  Doc snorted.

  “You ought to see the damn things now,” he said. “They’re regular pests. Growing all over town. Just weeds now. One of them is a sort of rose, with big purple blooms. Real pretty flower and the women around town sort of coddle them along for the bouquets. Not that they need much coddling. Then there’s another one that’s sort of a wild pea. Pretty good eating. Then there’s the polka-dot weed. Makes a right good dish of greens. Got spinach beat all hollow.”

  “Dr. Hansler sounds like an interesting person,” said Bob.

  “Mighty funny old duck,” said Doc, wagging his head. “Had all sorts of funny notions. Obstinate old cuss. Other botanists told him the seeds he got on Mars wouldn’t grow. They must of been over 5,000 years old. But he thought they would and he tried them and they did. That’s him all over.

  “He had another idea, too, that everybody laughed at, but he died believing that it was the truth. It wasn’t exactly in his line of work and so he never said a great deal about it. He told me, though. You know about the Genzik dynasty, don’t you?”

  Bob nodded. “Took a course in Martian history in school,” he said.

  “Well,” said Doc, “you’ll remember, then, that the Genzik dynasty was composed of a group of scientists that practically ruled Mars. They must have been old hell-cats for a fact, because the Martians rose up and rebelled against them and, history tells you, wiped out every last one of them. They destroyed all the laboratories the Genziks had set up and did everything possible to erase any memory of them. As a result there isn’t much known about them now.”

  “Martian history suggests they were only a higher Martian race,” said Bob. “I know there’s all sorts of myths about them.”

  “Well, sir,” said Doc, “Jake had a myth about them that would knock your hat off. He claims that a few of them escaped the general massacre and fled to the deserts and that their descendants are still there. Got it from desert tribes who claimed to know all about it. And Jake thought the Genziks were Earth people, maybe folks from Atlantis, who had reached Mars thousands of years ago, long before the present Terrestrial race sent a spaceship there.”

  “That’s a new one,” said Bob. “Never heard that before. Have you got any of Jake’s notes around here? Did he leave any books or anything?”

  Doc chuckled. “Looking for a story, I see,” he said.

  “The chief will sure give me hell if I don’t get something on this trip,” Bob told him, “and you certainly haven’t helped me any with this Hunger Disease business.”

  Doc finished off the bottle with gusto, then held it up to the light and sighed. “There’s one story you could write,” said Doc, setting the bottle on the window ledge, along with several others. “A story that should be written. It’s about those farmers here. The Venus Land Company brought them out. Knew they couldn’t grow a thing, but that didn’t stop those sharks. Took everything those poor devils had and dumped them in the jungle here. It does beat hell how the new land racket will get the suckers. Venus Land cooked up this farm scheme and sold it to a bunch of poor Iowa farmers. The worst of it is that the farmers don’t even own the land they’ve built their homes on. Some of them came up to see me about getting their money back. You know how it is—they figure a doctor knows everything, not ever dreaming how damn little some doctors do know. I looked over their contracts. Far as I can see they’re airtight. But I found the farmers settled on the wrong tract of land. I asked them how they knew what land they had bought and they told me a company representative staked it out for them. They settled on the east side of town and the land they bought is on the west side.”

  “Do they know about this?” Bob asked.

  Doc shook his head. “No, I didn’t tell them,” he said. “Don’t suppose it makes much difference. Venus Land won’t bother them any more. They got all the boys had and the land is worthless anyhow.”

  Boots clumped on the stairs and in a moment Angus MacDonald loomed in the doorway. “Doc,” he said, “Steve Donagan’s kid is sick again.”

  Doc heaved out of his chair.

  “If some of the rest of the people in New Chicago were like Susan,” he said, “maybe I could gain back some of my self-respect. She’s the only one who ever gets sick around here.”

  “Doc,” said Angus and one could sense stark terror in his voice.

  “Yes, yes, go on,” snapped Doc. Angus swallowed and started over again. “Doc,” he said, “Steve thinks she’s got that Hunger Disease.”

  Johnny Mason, wire editor, laid a slip of yellow paper on Editor Hart’s desk. “A special just out of New Chicago,” he explained.

  Hart snapped up the paper and read:

  “NEW CHICAGO, VENUS—THE HUNGER DISEASE, TO WHICH IT WAS BELIEVED THIS REMOTE TRADING POST WAS IMMUNE, STRUCK HERE TODAY. THE VICTIM IS SUSAN DONAGAN, NINE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER OF MR. AND MRS. STEPHEN DONAGAN.

  DR. ANDERSON TROWBRIDGE, THE TOWN’S ONLY DOCTOR, A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY WHO BROUGHT SUSAN INTO THE WORLD AND HAS ATTENDED HER THROUGH A LONG SERIES OF CHILDHOOD DISEASES, SAID THAT—”

  Hart flung the paper down on the desk.

  “Johnny,” he said, “right now, you’re looking at the biggest damn fool in the newspaper business. I got a hunch and sent Bob out there after a big story. He isn’t there more than ten hours and the story is all shot to hell.”

  Zeke Brown and his wife, Mary, sat on the doorstep of their cabin and gazed out over their farm.

  Night was closing down over the land and in the jungle night-things were awakening. Howls, roars, bellows and yelps mingled to make the night hideous. Zeke shivered as he listened and his hand crept to the butt of his gun. For five years he had heard this nightly chorus of hate and murder, but it always brought tremors of terror with each coming of darkness.

  “We’d ought to have some ‘taters pretty soon, Mary,” he said, striving to keep a tremble out of his voice. “I was looking at them today. Planted them in that sandy patch and the water drained off pretty good. They’ll taste fine.”

  He heard soft sobs and saw that his wife was weeping.

  “What’s the matter, Mary?” he asked. “Dog-gone, what are you crying for?”

  “It’s the chickens, Zeke,” she told him. “I set such stock by them hens of mine. And now they’re all gone. We won’t have no more eggs.”

  Zeke cursed.

  “Next time I see a skink,” he said, “I’m going to catch him alive and dunk him into one of them acid pools over there by the river.”

  Roughly he patted his wife’s shoulder.

  “I’ll sure fix them for what they done to our chickens,” he said.

  A thrumming roar sounded over the horizon and Zeke looked up quickly. The roar became louder and louder. With tubes red-hot, a flier swept over the edge of the jungle, dipped toward the ground with forward rockets blasting.

  Zeke leaped to his feet, waving his arms, cursing.

  “Keep out of my ‘tater patch, damn you!” he screamed. “I’ll sure for certain take the hide off you if you bust up my ‘tater patch.”

  The ship plunged downward, too fast for a safe landing. Its nose struck the potato patch, ripping into the soft soil, throwing it aside in great furrows like the mold-board of a giant plow.

  “Now you done it, damn it, now you done it,” shrieked Zeke. “You ruined my ‘tater crop!”

  He raced swiftly through the waist-high patches of polka-dot weeds that lay between the cabin and the potato patch.

  The ship’s nose was buried deep in the cushioning earth, but it did not appear to be damaged. As Zeke approached, the cabin door opened and a man staggered out.

  At the sight of Zeke he cried out, a piteous, animal-like cry. “Food, for the love of Heaven—food!” he cried. “I’m starving!”

  In the light
which flooded from the cabin door Zeke saw the man’s face and his anger turned swiftly to pity. He saw an old man, his form emaciated, his face pinched, eyes staring out of deep hollows, his cheeks sunken—a living skeleton.

  The man took a step forward, staggered and fell. Zeke scooped him up and galloped for the house.

  “Mary,” he yelled. “Get some food. This man is nearly starved.”

  A voice sounded out of the gloom. It was Luther, on his way over to spend a few hours with his friend.

  “What’s the matter, Zeke?”

  “Plane crashed,” Zeke yelled. “Better run to town and get Doc. There’s some other fellers in there. They look bad hurt.”

  “Be back in a minute with Doc if he’s sober,” Luther yelled back.

  Zeke heard his feet pounding rapidly down the road.

  “Zeke,” Mary’s voice was on the verge of despair, “I ain’t got nothing but a mess of greens. That ain’t fitten food for a sick man.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” said Zeke. “Give me a dish of it. This feller’s starved, I tell you.”

  IV

  “About all you can say for New Chicago is that nobody bothers you much here,” Doc told Bob. “Right good place for a man to hide out if he’s got something he don’t want known.

  “Take the feller who runs the Venus Flower saloon. He was a big racketeer back in Old Chicago on Earth. Came here three or four years ago. Then Angus MacDonald, you seen him this afternoon. His real name isn’t Angus MacDonald. Folks say he was one of the pirates that raised so much hell on the Earth-Mars run years ago. Then there’s old Hank Smith. Nice old feller. But he’s the head of a utility company that went haywire back on Earth. Lots of investors would like to get their fingers on him.”

  “How about yourself, Doc?” asked Bob. “No skeletons rattling around in your closet, is there?”

  “Hell, no,” said Doc. “I was just a damn fool who came out here to grow up with the country.”

  Doc patted the bottle that stood on the desk.

  “You certainly are a proper judge of liquor,” he said. “First time I had anything like this for years.”

  He tilted the bottle and it gurgled pleasantly.

  A rattle of footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Luther Bidwell stormed into the room. “Doc,” he shouted, “a plane just crashed out in Zeke Brown’s potato patch. Some of the fellers are in bad shape.”

  Doc reached for his raincoat. “Business picking up today,” he commented. “Two calls in a few hours.”

  He slipped the bottle into his coat pocket.

  With Luther in the lead, the three men raced down the stairs and out into the street. The weather had cleared to some extent, but the street was one vast mud-hole.

  Running, they took the road to Zeke’s house, a little over a mile distant.

  Zeke greeted them at the doorway. “Hated to bother you, Doc,” he said, “but didn’t know how bad it was. Starving man and four dead men in the plane. Looks like they died from starvation. Old men, white hair and every one of them just skin and bones. The feller I brought here was pretty bad off when I picked him up, but Mary fed him up and he seems all right now.”

  “Starving,” asked Doc. “Do you mean they look like they died because of lack of food?”

  “Sure do,” Zeke affirmed.

  Bob shoved the farmer to one side and ducked into the cabin. He made out the figure of a man lying on the bed. With one stride he was across the room and bending over the man.

  “Were you the man in the plane?” he asked.

  “Yes, I was,” the flier replied. “This farmer tells me all the others died.”

  “Did you have the Hunger Disease?” demanded Bob.

  “I guess so,” the man answered weakly. “We were at a post on the Pearl River. Heard about it over the radio and figured we were lucky to be out of touch with everyone. Thought we were safe. But it hit us day before yesterday. We started for Radium City, thinking we might find help there.”

  “How do you feel now?” asked Bob.

  The man ran a skeletonlike hand over his stomach, pressed and punched his midriff.

  “Pain’s all gone,” he announced. “Feel fine. Not hungry any more. First time I haven’t been hungry for two days. Before this it didn’t matter how much I ate, I was always hungry.”

  “Did you eat much here?”

  “No, just a dish of greens of some sort. Seemed to fill me up right away and gave me a lot of strength. Still pretty weak, but I feel different. Feel like myself again. Not sick any longer. Feel like I’m going to get well.”

  Bob rose and turned around. “Zeke,” he asked, “what did you feed this man?”

  Mary Brown answered the question. “All I had was some greens. I was so ashamed, but Zeke said they was better than nothing.”

  “Mrs. Brown,” asked Bob, “what were those greens made out of?”

  “Why,” she said, “polka-dot weeds. They make fine greens.”

  “Doc,” Bob shouted.

  Doc waddled across the room.

  “Listen to me,” said Bob, taking hold of the slack at the throat of Doc’s raincoat. “Does everyone in New Chicago eat greens made out of the polka-dot weed?”

  Doc squirmed. “Why, I guess so,” he said. “Everybody likes it. Me, I eat all I can get of them.”

  “Does Susan Donagan eat it? Does she like it?”

  “No,” said Doc, “come to think of it, she doesn’t. Doesn’t like anything green. Her mother frets a lot because she won’t touch spinach.”

  “Doc,” said Bob, “listen to me and do what I tell you. Try to get that old alcohol-fogged brain of yours to working. You get down to Donagan’s as fast as you can. Feed Susan polka-dot greens. Hold her and cram them down her throat if you have to. And then watch. If she gets well, I’ll make you famous. I’ll write your name in 72 point type and put your mug on every front page in the System.”

  Doc cracked his fist in the palm of his hand.

  “I see what you are getting at, Bob,” he shouted.

  Quickly he spun about and made for the door.

  Bob shouted after him. “Remember, Doc, keep sober. You’ll need all the sense you have.”

  “Sure will,” said Doc.

  Half a mile down the road he took the bottle from his pocket and flipped it into the underbrush. A few quick steps and he turned back. On hands and knees he fumbled beside the road. His questing hand touched something smooth. He lifted the bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth. The liquor gurgled down his throat.

  On the road again, trudging toward town, Doc wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve.

  “It wasn’t like it was just plain rotgut,” he told himself. “Been all right to throw that kind of stuff away. But it would have been downright sinful to waste good Scotch.”

  Arthur Hart paced the floor of his office.

  Hap Folsworth, sports editor, sat with his feet on Hart’s desk and smoked a Venus-weed cigar.

  “What in hell do you suppose Bob’s run into out there?” Hart demanded of Hap. “He sends me word to wait for a real story. No hint of what it is. Nothing to go on.”

  “He’s sitting down in a Venusian saloon laughing up his sleeve at you,” said Hap. “He’s getting even with you for sending him out there.”

  Hart smoothed out the piece of paper that had come over the interworld teletype three hours before.

  It read:

  HOLD PRESSES READY FOR EXTRA. HAVE MOST IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT STORY. CAN’T BE SURE YET. WILL KNOW IN FOUR HOURS, MAYBE LESS. BOB.

  Hart raged.

  “Here I’ve held a secret wave length open for him ever since the last edition. The theatres will be closed pretty soon and we’ll lose all our street sales. If he’s running a sandy on me I’ll bust him wide open when he gets back.”
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  A boy stuck his head in the door. “Receiving signal on the New Chicago machine,” he shouted.

  Hart spun about and raced after the boy. In his wake lumbered the sports editor. The city room was tense with excitement.

  “Receiving signal just came over,” said Johnny Mason. “Ought to be along anytime now.”

  The machine chattered and chittered, but the keys still remained motionless.

  Then the machine lurched to a start.

  Methodically the keys tapped out:

  THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK. THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED—”

  “A test,” said Johnny. “The operator at New Chicago is running a test.”

  Then the machine stood motionless for a moment.

  “Get going,” yelled Hart, pounding the machine cover with a clenched fist.

  Again the keys moved, slowly, maddeningly methodical—: NEW CHICAGO, VENUS—DR. ANDERSON TROWBRIDGE, HEALTH OFFICER AND ONLY PHYSICIAN IN THIS TINY TRADING POST, ANNOUNCED TODAY HE HAD DISCOVERED A CURE FOR THE HUNGER DISEASE. THE CURE IS OBTAINED FROM AN HERB, KNOWN LOCALLY AS THE POLKA-DOT WEED. AN ANCIENT PLANT FROM THE PLANET MARS, BROUGHT HERE SIX YEARS AGO BY DR. JACOB HANSLER, WHO FOUND THE SEEDS IN A RUINED LABORATORY DATING BACK TO THE GENZIK DYNASTY, THE POLKA-DOT WEED IS—”

  Hart rushed from the tiny cubbyhole housing the machine.

  “Herb,” he shouted to his assistant editor, “get pictures of Dr. Jacob Hansler. Pictures of Bob Jackson. Pictures of Dr. Anderson Trowbridge—”

  “Who in hell,” asked Herb, “is Dr. Anderson Trowbridge?”

  “How in hell should I know?” roared. Hart. “Phone the International Medical Society. They’ll tell you. But get pictures! He’s the biggest news in ten years. Write headlines a foot high in three shades blacker than night. We roll in half an hour.”

  He turned to Hap Folsworth.

  “We’ll have them fighting to get this one,” he exulted. “We’ll get out the biggest damn extra and score the biggest scoop this city has ever seen.”