The Weaver signified that he would be only too pleased. He insisted upon including a supply of chemicals and a special light-tube. He and Rylat examined the latter, and the Olittran assured him that he could arrange to feed the proper power into it. The Olittrans carried enough water to supply the tank.
Both Solarians donned vacuum suits to assist with the transportation of the tank, which they thoughtfully enclosed in an insulated cylinder. Rylat was qualified to bear only a token share of the burden across the and outside. Akyro trailed the group unsteadily, eyestalks still a bit retracted.
The Solarians helped get the cylinder inside the Olittran vessel but declined to be shown around.
"Probably feel a bit clumsy because of their size and those bulky suits," Rylat thought to Akyro.
To the Solarians, he expressed appreciation and asked if thaw hail not hit anon some gift he could make in return.
"It is nothing!" waved the Weaver. "Do you intend to leave soon?"
"Rylat!" pleaded Akyro. "Tell him yes, and quickly! If they take time to reflect, they will surely realize the value of what they are giving us!"
"Patience! I, too, deeply desire to mount a starbeam."
He signaled to the Solarian that they did intend to leave almost immediately. The Weaver expressed regret.
"But tell me what we can do," insisted Rylat, fearful lest cause arise to make him surrender his booty.
"We had considered inspecting the planet's surface and its mineral content," the Weaver informed him.
"An interesting hobby," replied Rylat doubtfully.
By the looks they exchanged, the two Solarians were as puzzled at that as he was at their project. Who cared what minerals could be dug up? One could convert them any time.
"Our object," the Weaver tried again, "was to make ourselves comfortable on the surface and take a holiday from the confines of the ship."
"Ah!" answered Rylat, comprehending at last. "Why, if you wish to use our shelter, you are more than welcome."
The Weaver accepted with thanks, but wondered about the Olittrans' departure.
"It will not matter," Rylat assured him. "We can pick up the shelter the next time we pass this way."
"Rylat! Give it to him! Let us leave this place with some dispatch," pleaded Akyro.
"In fact," continued Rylat, "I recall that we have another, so you might as well keep the one outside. I will get you a set of instructions for the. entrance valve and the heat converter. You will be able to understand the diagrams, at least."
He did so, and after many exchanges of courtesies, the Solarians departed.
Akyro wasted no time in securing the tank of plants in the hold. As soon as the Solarians were safely in their own ship, Rylat took off.
He spiraled away from the planet and set a tentative course for the limit between Sectors Twelve and Eleven.
"About my remark on returning to pick up that shelter," he teased Akyro, "you did not believe I would really risk facing them again? After cheating them like that?"
Akyro did not reply. Rylat turned an eye toward hitn and saw that he was watching his dials intently.
"What is it?" he asked, vaguely uneasy.
"Moving radiation of the same pattern. It must be the Solarians, leaving the planet."
"How fast?" demanded Rylat, wondering if he dared step up the acceleration even more.
"About as fast as we, perhaps a bit more."
Rylat's eyestalks cringed. He hastily estimated the emergency power available to him.
"Enough to catch us?" he inquired anxiously.
"Oh, no," Akyro told him calmly. "They are heading in the opposite direction."
"What?"
"No doubt of it. As fast as they can, apparently."
Rylat rose from the piloting bench and joined the other at the bank of instruments.
"I do not understand it," he thought to Akyro. "They claimed they intended to stay. And we certainly left nothing to make them hurry home."
"Perhaps the mechanism of the entrance valve?"
"No ... they had better on their ship. And they showed no special interest in the heat converter. I doubt they would want to play at transmuting elements."
"Who would want a heat converter for that? They, too, must have better ways."
"Exactly. So what could be on their consciences?"
They pondered until Rylat returned to the piloting bench and curiously focused the image of the Solarian vessel on the telescreen.
"Let us admire their folly," Akyro suggested, "but not to the extent of lingering."
"No ... and yet, I wonder why—"
He watched the other ship move out of focus.
"Look at them go!" he thought to Akyro. Anyone would suspect that they—not we—had practically committed theft!"
<
~ * ~
Jack Vance
HARD-LUCK DIGGING
Strange planets will always offer new and unpredictable hazards to human explorers, and trouble will always be in wait for those human exploiters who proceed as if conditions on such planets are the same as on Earth. Magnus Ridolph, the lead character in this story, is a specialist in alien life forms; it his job to correct the errors of less knowledgeable and less intelligent Earthian capitalists and technicians in their attempts to deal with the unusual in alien life. Here he copes dangerously but successfully with one of the more peculiar types of intelligence to be found in the Galaxy.
~ * ~
SUPERINTENDENT JAMES ROGGE’S office occupied the top of a low knoll at Diggings A, and his office, through a semicircular window, overlooked both diggings, A and B, all the way down to the beach and the strange-colored ocean beyond. Rogge sat within, chair turned to the window, drumming his fingers in quick irregular tempo. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and strode across the room. He was tall and thin, and his black eyes sparkled in a face parched and bony, while his chin dished out below his mouth like a shovel blade.
He punched a button at the telescreen, waited, leaning slightly forward, his finger still holding down the button. There was no response. The screen hummed quietly but remained ash-gray, dead.
Rogge clenched his fists. “What a demoralized outfit! Won’t even answer the screen.”
As he turned his back the screen came alive. Rogge swung around, clasped his hands behind his back. “Well?”
“Sorry, Mr. Rogge, but they’ve just found another,” panted the cadet engineer.
Rogge stiffened. “Where, this time?”
“In the shower room. He’d just been cleaning up.” Rogge flung his arms out from his sides.
“How many times have I told them not to shower alone? By Deneb, I can’t be everywhere! Haven’t they brains enough—” A knock at the door interrupted him. A timekeeper pushed his head in.
“The mail ship’s in sight, Mr. Rogge.”
Rogge took a step toward the door, looked back over his shoulder.
“You attend to that, Kelly. I’m holding you responsible!”
The cadet blinked. “I can’t help it if—” he began querulously, but he was speaking to the retreating back of his superior, and then to the empty office. He muttered, dialed off.
Rogge strode out on the beach. He was early, for the ship was still a black spot in the purple-blue sky. When it finally settled, fuming and hissing, on the glinting gray sand, Rogge hardly waited for the steam to billow away before stepping forward to the port.
There was a few minutes’ delay while the crew released themselves from their shock-belts. Rogge shuffled his feet, fidgeting like a nervous race horse. Metallic sounds came from within. The dogs twisted, the port opened with a sigh, and Rogge moved irritably back from the smell of hot oil, men, carbolic acid, paint.
A round red face looked out the port.
“Hello, Doc,” called Rogge. “All cleared for landing?”
“Germ-free,” said the red face. “Safe as Sunday school.”
“Well, open ‘er up!”
The flus
hed medico eyed Rogge with a detached birdlike curiosity. “You in a hurry?”
Rogge tilted his head, stared at the doctor eye to eye. The red face disappeared, the port opened wider, a short plump man in blue shorts swung out on the stage, descended the ladder. He flipped a hand to Rogge.
“Hello, Julie,” said Rogge, peering up past him to the open port. “Any passengers?”
“Thirteen replacements for you. Cat-skinners, a couple plumbers— spacesick all the way.”
Rogge snorted, jerked his head. “Thirteen? Do you know I’ve lost thirty-three men this last month? Didn’t you pick up a T. C. I. man in Starport?”
The captain looked at him sideways. “Yes, he’s aboard. Looks like you’re anxious.”
“Anxious!” Rogge grinned wickedly, humorlessly. “You’d be anxious yourself with two, three men strangled every day.”
Captain Julie narrowed his eyes. “It’s true, is it?” He looked up to the two tall cliffs that marked diggings A and B, the raw clutter of barracks and machine shops below. “We heard rumors in Starport, but I didn’t—” His voice dwindled away. Then: “Any idea at all who’s doing it?”
“Not one in the world. It’s a homicidal maniac, no doubt as to that, but every time I think I’ve got him spotted, there’s another killing. The whole camp’s demoralized. I can’t get an honest day’s work out of any man on the place. I’m a month behind schedule. I radioed the T. C. I. two weeks ago.”
Captain Julie nodded toward the port. “There he is.”
Rogge took a half step forward, halted, blinked. The man descending the ladder was of medium height, medium weight, and something past middle age. He had white hair, a small white beard, a fine straight nose.
Rogge darted a glance at Captain Julie, who returned him a humorous shrug. Rogge turned back to the old man, now gazing leisurely up and down the glistening gray beach, out over the lambent white ocean. Rogge pulled his head between his bony shoulders, stepped forward. “Ah—I’m James Rogge, superintendent,” he rasped. The old man turned, and Rogge found himself looking into wide, blue eyes, dear and guileless.
“My name is Magnus Ridolph,” said the old man. “I understand that you’re having difficulty ?”
“Yes,” said Rogge. He stood back, looking Magnus Ridolph up and down. “I was expecting a man from the Intelligence Corps.”
Magnus Ridolph nodded. “I happened to be passing through Star-port, and the commander asked me to visit you. At the moment I’m not officially connected with the Corps, but I’ll do all I can to help you.”
Rogge clamped his teeth, glared out to sea. At last he turned back to Ridolph. “Here’s the situation. Men are being murdered, I don’t know by whom. The whole camp is demoralized. I’ve ordered the entire personnel to go everywhere in couples—and still they’re killed!”
Magnus Ridolph looked across the beach to the hills, low rounded masses covered with glistening vegetation in all shades of black, gray, and white.
“Suppose you show me around the camp.”
Rogge hesitated. “Are you ready—right now? Sure you don’t want to rest first?”
“I’m ready.”
Rogge turned to the captain. “See you at dinner, Julie—unless you want to come around with us?”
Captain Julie hesitated. “Just a minute till I tell the mate I’m ashore.” He clambered up the ladder.
Magnus Ridolph was gazing out at the slow-heaving, milk-white ocean that glowed as if illuminated from beneath.
“Plankton?”
Rogge nodded. “Intensely luminescent. At night the ocean shines like molten metal.”
Magnus Ridolph nodded. “This is a very beautiful planet. So Earth-like and yet so strangely different in its coloring.”
“That’s right,” said Rogge. “Whenever I look up on the hill I think of an extremely complicated steel engraving . . . the different tones of gray in the leaves.”
“What, if any, is the fauna of the planet ?”
“So far we’ve found creatures that resemble panthers, quite a few four-armed apes, and any number of rodents,” Rogge said.
“No intelligent aborigines?”
Rogge shook his head. “So far as we know—no. And we’ve surveyed a good deal of the planet.”
“How many men in the camp?”
“Eleven hundred, thereabouts,” said Rogge. “Eight hundred at Diggings A, three hundred at B. It’s at B where the murders occur. I’m thinking of closing down the diggings for a while.”
Magnus Ridolph tugged at his beard. “Murders only at Diggings B? Have you shifted the personnel?”
Rogge nodded, glared at the massive column of ore that was Diggings B. “I’ve changed every man jack in the camp. And still the killings go on—in locked rooms, in the showers, the toilets, anywhere a man happens to be alone for a minute or two.”
“It sounds almost as if you’ve disturbed an invisible genius loci,” said Magnus Ridolph.
Rogge snorted. “If that means ‘ghost,’ I’ll agree with you. ‘Ghost’ is about the only explanation I got left. Four times, now, a man has been killed in a locked room with no opening larger than a barred four-inch ventilator. We’ve slipped into the room with nets, screened every cubic foot. Nothing.”
Captain Julie came down the ladder, joined Rogge and Magnus Ridolph. They turned up the hard-packed gray beach toward Diggings A, a jut of rock breaking sharply out of the gently rolling hills.
“The ore,” Rogge explained, “lies in a layer at about ground level. “We’re bulldozing the top surface off onto the beach. When we’re all done, that big crag will be leveled flat to the ground and the little bay will be entirely filled.”
“And Diggings B is the same proposition?” asked Magnus Ridolph. “It looks about the same formation from here.”
“Yes, it’s about the same. They’re old volcanic necks, both of them. At B, we’re pushing the fill into a low canyon in back. When we’re done at B—if we ever get done—the canyon will be level full a mile back, and we’ll use it for a town site.”
They climbed up from the beach on a sloping shoulder of rock. Rogge guided them toward the edge of the forest, fifty feet distant.
“I’ll show you something,” Rogge said. “Fruit like you’ve never seen before in your life.” He stopped at a shiny black trunk, plucked one of the red globes that hung within an easy reach. “Try one of these.” And Rogge bit into one of the soft skins himself.
Magnus Ridolph and the captain gravely followed suit.
“They are indeed very good,” said the old man.
“They don’t grow at B,” said Rogge bitterly. “Just along this stretch here. Diggings B is the hard-luck spot of the entire project. The leopards and the apes killed men at B until we put up a charged steel fence. Here at A there’s some underbrush that keeps them out. Full of thorns.”
A sound in the foliage attracted his attention. He craned his neck. “Look! There’s one right now—an ape!” And Magnus Ridolph and the captain, looking where he pointed, glimpsed a monstrous black barrel, a hideous face with red eyes and a fanged mouth. The brute observed them, hissed softly, took a challenging step forward. Magnus Ridolph and the captain jerked back. Rogge laughed.
“You’re safe. Watch him.”
The ape lunged nearer, then suddenly halted with a roar. He struck out a great arm at the air, roared again. He charged forward, stopped short, howling, retreated.
Rogge threw the core of the fruit at him. “If this were at B, he’d have killed the three of us.” He peered through the foliage. “Gah! Get away from here, you ugly devil!” And Rogge ducked in alarm as a length of stick hurtled past his head.
“The creature apparently has a comparatively high order of intelligence,” suggested Magnus Ridolph.
“Mmph,” snapped Rogge. “Well—perhaps so. We killed one at Diggings B, and two others dug a grave for him under a tree, buried him while we were watching.”
Magnus Ridolph looked soberly into the forest. “I can tel
l you how to stop these murders.”
Rogge jerked his head around. “How?”
“Survey off an area of land in such a way that both diggings, A and B, are a mile inside the perimeter. Around the boundary erect a charged steel fence, and clear the land inside of all vegetation.”
Possible Worlds of Science Fiction Page 30
