Air . . . for God’s sake, air!
He saw the blisters on the snow without realizing their significance. He must have crawled a few yards without conscious volition. And his distended eyes glared down at dozens of puffy blisters in the bluesnow. What did that mean? He had once known . . . It didn’t matter. There was almost a pleasure now in the pain that tore at him. Its sharp intensity was dulling. And he was sliding down, somehow . . .
Blisters in the snow. Snowhogs. Small animals from Venus that lived on hydrogen. A snowhog that drank the water from a tumbler . . .
Air!
Recklessly, with numb, stiff fingers, Harding tore at the fastenings of his helmet. He managed to get it part way off. His face suddenly was bathed in stinging flames. Paralyzing cold . . . but that didn’t matter now. The only thing that mattered was air.
HE dug down in the bluesnow. The little animals weren’t far. Harding broke through into a small cave and felt something indescribable breathe up at him—oxygen. He sucked it in with hungry greed, thrusting his face deep into the snow and breathing the life-giving oxy deep into his lungs. Renewed vigor flowed through him.
But the oxygen was gone now. He could get more—there had been a way.
If he could remember . . . The snowhogs, of course! They lived on hydrogen. They drank water and assimilated the hydrogen, releasing the oxygen as waste matter. The large pores on their skins excreted oxygen. And the bluesnow was H20, even though electrolysis wouldn’t work on it.
But when the snowhogs hibernated, their metabolism was slowed down and they couldn’t eat H20 or release oxygen. The snowhog back at the farm had revived in the warm air. Warmth—
Harding turned on his heating unit full strength. He didn’t know how long it would last, but it was necessary to take the chance. He scooped up a heap of snowhogs and bluesnow in both arms, hugged the small animals to his warming suit, and managed to lower his helmet till it covered the upper part of his face. The hogs began to wriggle and stir. A breath of oxygen drifted up and was caught in the helmet; Harding’s starved lungs drank it in hungrily.
He staggered erect, still cradling his life-giving burden. The animals, warmed into sluggish activity, began to devour the bluesnow—and the heat speeded up their basal metabolism. Oxygen—waste matter to them—was released as they assimilated the hydrogen from the snow, and much of that oxygen rose into Harding’s helmet. He waited a moment, breathing deeply, and then lurched forward down the slope. No use to head for Morse’s cabin, of course.
The white tractor, capped by bluesnow, came into view. With a gasp of relief Harding flung himself into the lock and shut the valve after him. His stiff fingers found the warning buzzer. Pender must have been waiting by the stopcock inside, for immediately oxygen came hissing into the lock.
The inner door opened. Harding stumbled over the threshold, dropping the snowhogs to writhe excitedly on the floor. His face was a drawn mask.
Pender caught his partner by the arms.
“Jim! What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Harding croaked. He was tearing off his insulating garment. “Get me the other suit, quick! And a shovel!”
He snatched a fair-sized wooden box from a corner and emptied a miscellany of equipment from it.
Pender, jaw agape, was back with suit and shovel. Harding donned the former, nodded reassuringly, and valved some oxygen into it.
“Be back in a few minutes,” he said, and departed, carrying the box and the shovel with him.
He did not go far. He began to dig at random in the bluesnow, and at last found what he wanted. After that he shoveled furiously till he had uncovered a patch of hard, frozen soil in which grew a cluster of spiky plants. They resembled cacti, save that their leaves were triangular and pointed. “French-fries”, they were named by the farmers, because of the shape of their pulpy leaves.
HARDING carefully uprooted several dozen plants and then filled the wooden box with soil—a difficult task, even though the frenchfries had kept the ground from freezing entirely. With his burden he went back to the ship, keeping his face grim, though he felt like grinning in triumph. Inside the tractor cabin he stripped off the suit and tossed it to Susan.
“Get into it—quick!” And as she hesitated: “Damn it, do as I say!”
The girl obeyed silently, her lips firmly compressed. Harding pointed to the airlock.
“Outside. You’ve oxygen enough for ten minutes. Wait near the ship till the time’s up. Then come back.”
“B-but—”
“Don’t ask questions!”
Harding’s voice was a command. He waited till Susan had disappeared and the outer door had thudded shut. Then he turned to Pender.
“Come on, fella! We’ve got to work fast. I’ve an idea that may smash Dain and his O-Trust wide open.”
The redhead stared. “Have you gone batty, Jim?”
Harding was ripping the heat unit out of the spare suit, the one Morse’s bullet had torn.
“Hell, no. Shut up and give me a hand before that dame comes back. I don’t trust her, and she’d give the whole show away if she knew what we do.” He bent over the box, burying the heat unit in the soil till it was invisible. The control button, however, lay just under the surface in one corner, and could be depressed by a slight motion. Then Harding picked up the snowhogs one by one and buried them in the soil. They wriggled a bit, but soon relapsed into tightly curled drowsiness. Harding covered them over and planted the frenchfries above them, till the pulpy brownish leaves almost hid the dirt that filled the box.
“What’d you say?” he asked, conscious that Pender had been speaking.
“The girl. Listen, Jim, we got her all wrong. That crooked half-brother of hers has been stuffing her full of lies. She’s new on Planetoid 31, and Dain’s made her believe we medicine farmers are the scum of the System. She started asking me questions about Morse and his family, and—and—well, the girl’s all right. She knows the real set-up now, and she’s with us.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. We had her wrong—” Harding nodded toward the lock.
“Here she is. Let her in. But keep your mouth valved. I don’t trust that girl; she’s too smart. Let her in, Mat. The storm’s dying a bit, and we’re heading for Trust headquarters. Go on, don’t stall!”
LUCK was with the medicine farmers. The storm did die, after an hour of intermittent gales, and the tractor went racing over the surface of Planetoid 31 to an empty horizon. Soon it grew dark, but powerful search-beams warned the travelers of gulleys and boulders in their path.
NOT long after nightfall they reached O-Trust headquarters, a group of well-built, airtight cabins, guarded by a miniature fortress that was the oxygen storehouse. The tractor lurched into a shed and halted as the door rolled down and air hissed through valves.
Harding paused long enough to take a can of salt from a shelf and place it in his pocket. Then, carrying the heavy box of dirt and frenchfries, he led the way out of the ship, Pender and Susan trailing him. The girl had been very silent during the trip and thoughtful as well. Harding knew that because he found himself stealing surreptitious glances at her. Too bad she was one of the Trusters—because it would be easy to fall for her, under different circumstances. Well, what the hell . . .
Harding gave the box to Pender, and glanced at Susan’s electromatic, which he had stuck in his belt. Then they passed through the locks and were in the office of the Oxygen Trust, a well-furnished, comfortable room with a big desk in the center and a smaller one against the wall. The latter belonged to Susan, Harding knew.
Behind the big desk sat Fred Dain. The slightest edge of a smile lay on him, and his smoothly shaven face and light fabric clothes contrasted sharply with the worn garments of the two medicine farmers.
Harding said, “Put it on his desk, Mat.” And Dain’s eyebrows rose as the grimy box was slammed down on polished mahogany.
“Well, Harding?” the Trust man asked quietly.
“Just this
. I’ve found a way to smash you, Dain. You’ve made plenty of dough out of your oxygen monopoly. Well, that’s all over now. You’re washed up. I’m giving you a chance to sign over the O-Trust to the medicine farmers of Planetoid 31, collectively.”
Dain’s lips were still curled in an amused smile.
“Won’t the farmers pay me a cent for my little business?”
“Yeah. A dollar. One buck, to make the transaction legal.”
The seated man glanced at Susan and then back to Harding.
“If you’ve anything to say, say it. Or else get out.”
“Right! You’ve got a monopoly on oxygen here. Correct? You’re making money because the farmers can’t get oxygen anywhere else. Right again. Now, suppose I’d found a way of manufacturing oxygen cheaply, so that every farmer could use it, and wouldn’t need to buy from you.”
Dain’s eyes changed. He let his gaze fall to the box of plants.
Harding thrust his forefinger into the soil in one corner of the box—and felt the heat-unit control click softly over. He took the tin of salt from his pocket.
“This is the answer, Dain. Right under our eyes, only we never guessed what it meant till now. Frenchfries, growing wild all over the planet, just—weeds.”
The Trust man said, very softly, “What are you driving at?”
Harding sprinkled salt over the frenchfries.
“Get a whiff of that!”
Dain leaned forward over the desk and sniffed. For a second his impassive mask dropped.
“Oxygen! But how—Let’s see that can!”
He snatched the tin from the other’s hands and tasted the white crystals.
“Sodium chloride,” Harding affirmed. “Miles of it in the swamps here—not to mention the salt mines. All the farmers have to do is cultivate frenchfries, keep a supply of salt on hand—and they get oxygen. So—” His gaze lashed out. “So you’d better sign over the O-Trust!”
DAIN sank back in his chair, interlacing his fingers.
“Suppose I don’t.”
Harding felt his stomach drop like an elevator, but he kept his face impassive.
“Okay. Stay on, if you want. You realize how much the farmers love you. Right now they don’t dare move a finger, because you’ve got a stranglehold on them through the monopoly. But when we have free oxygen on 31 and the farmers can go on living without you . . .
“Do you remember Morse, Dain? And Andreasson, whose sister died of oxy-thirst while he was away in his tractor? Do you think your guns can keep men like that away from your throat, Dain?”
For a full minute the room was utterly silent. Then:
“Why do you want the Trust?”
“You’ve good, sound buildings here. It’s centrally located. It’s got facilities, and we can make it the headquarters of the new farmers’ association.”
Dain’s face was flushed—by the increase of oxygen in the air. This, perhaps, turned the balance. Without a word he reached for paper and pen and scratched out a contract.
He signed it; Harding and Pender read and signed in turn, and Harding tossed a dollar across the desk.
“Okay,” he said, pocketing the document. “I’ll give you a week to clear out. If I were you, I’d go—far.”
Without waiting for an answer, he picked up the box of frenchfries and started for the door. It would not do to leave them, for then Dain might discover the buried snowhogs, revived by the heat and now emitting oxygen.
The trust man said suddenly, “Wait, Harding,” and stood up.
Harding turned, still holding the box. He saw Pender, at his side, stiffen. For Dain had an electro-gun in his hand, and it was aimed unwaveringly.
With a soft little cry, Susan leaped across the room to her desk. Harding did not look at her. He was wondering if he could drop the box and go for his gun. Pender, by fatal ill luck, was unarmed.
Dain said, “Probably you two are the only ones who know about this discovery. I may be wrong, but the chance is worth taking. If you two die—”
His eyes changed. Harding saw his finger tighten on the trigger, and the medicine farmer tensed his muscles for a hopeless leap to one side. It would be useless, he knew, for Dain was an expert marksman. In a split second the gun would—
Crack! The spiteful report snapped through the room. Harding almost felt the shock of the electrobolt, and found himself staring in blank amazement at the reeling figure of Dain, who went staggering back, shaking a hand that was a charred, smoking ember. The gun was fused on the floor.
Harding looked, then, at Susan. A drawer in her desk was open, and she stood holding a blue-steel electromatic that still trembled with the violence of the explosion.
Pender said weakly, “I told you she was on our side.”
“T-that’s right,” Susan gasped—and quietly fainted.
Harding put the box of frenchfries down on the floor. He jerked his thumb to Dain, who was leaning on his desk and groaning.
“Fix him up, Mat. Bandage his hand. He’s got to be ready to catch the next space-liner out of here. I’ve got to take care of my fiancée.”
The redhead stared. “Uh—what? Your fiancée?”
Harding grinned as he lifted the unconscious girl in his arms.
“Sure. She doesn’t know it yet, but—give her time, fella! Give her time!”
THE COMEDY OF ERAS
Shakespeare Gees to Town When the Year Leaper Merrily Trips From Baird to Verse!
PETE MANX was hurt. There he stood, resplendent in a bright green suit, specially tailored to fit his squat form, with a maroon shirt and a salmon-pink necktie that was positively blinding. Not Solomon in all his glory had ever been arrayed thus. A little admiration—even a casual comment—would have bucked Pete up tremendously. But, instead, he was being ignored while Doctor Mayhem and Professor Aker were arguing excitedly.
“I repeat—Bacon!” Mayhem said firmly, and set down a test-tube in its rack with more force than was strictly necessary. His small, scrawny figure trembled with indignation.
So that was it. They were talking about chow. Well, Pete could give them, a few pointers on that. He had once run a hamburger stand at Ocean Park between jobs as barker and concessionaire.
“Ever try a cheeseburger, Doc?” he put in. “I can—”
“Shakespeare!” bellowed Professor Aker. The shout shook rheostats and power cables as the scientist slammed one fat fist into another. He clutched at his pince-nez as they fell to dangle by a black ribbon against his bulky paunch. “Every principle of psychology tends to prove that William Shakespeare wrote the plays.”
Mayhem sneered. “I admit the sonnets,” he observed, “but you have the colossal nerve to contend—in my own laboratory—that Francis Bacon did not write Romeo and Macbeth and—”
“Hey!” said Pete. “You’re both wrong. MGM wrote Romeo and Juliet—or maybe it was Paramount, I forget. I saw it at the Capital.”
Aker turned to confront this new antagonist.
“Pete,” he murmured, “this may be a shock to you, but Romeo was first written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in England. And where in the sacred name of Einstein did you get that fantastic garment you’re wearing?”
“You like it?” Pete preened himself. “Pipe the shoes. Two-tone. Yellow and red. Latest thing out. Boy, do I wow ’em down along Broadway.”
Aker moaned slightly, but said nothing.
“That ain’t what I dropped in for, though,” Mr. Manx beamed. “I just wanted to say adios. I’m taking a vacation.”
Professor Aker, still mumbling about Shakespeare, paid little attention as Pete went on.
“I’m kinda strapped just now, but I figure I can pick up some dough in Florida. Start a concession or something. I need a change of air, anyhow—”
“Bacon!” said Doctor Mayhem. “If I could prove it—”
“Whup!” said Professor Aker, his jaw sagging into his chins. “Mayhem! You can!”
THE eyes of the two men met, exchanged understandin
g glances Then, slowly, their gaze swiveled to Pete, who suddenly began to sweat.
“No!” he burst out. “I ain’t going to do it.”
“What?” There was an ominous note in Aker’s silky tone.
“I dunno, but whatever it is—”
“Look,” said Mayhem ingratiatingly, “you said you needed a vacation and were short of dough. How’d you like to make a thousand dollars and get a free vacation at the same time?”
“Where to?” Pete demanded suspiciously.
“Er—England.”
“I been to England. In that screwy time machine of yours. One time I went back to Robin Hood’s time, and once to King Arthur’s administration. I—hey! You don’t mean?”
“Ah, yes.” Mayhem smiled. “It won’t hurt a bit, Pete. You know that. Just a little trip into time to prove that Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.”
“No.” Mr. Manx sounded stubborn. “Look—you send me back to Rome and I get thrown to the lions. In Egypt I get put on a chain gang. Last time I was in England they tried to burn me at the stake. Nineteen-forty suits me. All I have to worry about is the census arid my income tax.”
“But those were uncivilized times,” Aker put in his oar. “Elizabethan England was a cultured period. They had bowling, football—and when you met anybody, you didn’t have to shake hands. You could kiss them. Erasmus and Cavendish mention that particularly.”
“Nuts,” Pete observed, but there was a twinkle in his eyes. “Dames is poison. Bowling, huh?”
“Yes. And—dice, card parties—Sir Christopher Hatton once gave a party and put a thousand pounds at the disposal of his guests.”
“Five grand, huh? Well—”
“All you have to do is just drop into England, find out who wrote the Shakespearean plays, and then return. That’s one question only you can settle for us. For many years scholars have debated whether or not Shakespeare himself wrote all the plays credited to his name. Some savants claim that the. famous Francis’ Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. You won’t have to stay long to get the real lowdown.”
Collected Fiction Page 166
