Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  They came in sight of Vagga den Zony, his spectacles gone, hands pressed to his ears, and his face twisted in pain. Dill dragged Fargo past the howling Ganymedean.

  “No time for him now. We want the Baron.”

  They found the Baron, a minute or so later, seated in the middle of a path, trying to stop-Lis ears, and kicking out like a beached fish. He was yelling miserably. At sight of the Earthmen, he made frantic snatch for the ray-projector beside him, but Dill leaped forward and kicked the weapon away. Then he snapped handcuffs on the Ganymedean’s skinny wrists.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now tell Red it’s time to change his tune.”

  Fargo gulped and ran off.

  After a few moments the music altered, drifting into a dreamy waltz. The screams of the Ganymedeans subsided. Fargo came back, Vagga den Zony behind him.

  “He tried to kill me!” the latter gasped. “He—he—”

  “Sure,” Dill said soothingly. “It’s okay now, though. We’ll keep the Baron locked up and feed him scopolamin till he records a confession. You’d better go and lie down, Mr. Zony. And take a sedative.”

  The Ganymedean staggered off, supported by a hastily-summoned attendant, while another took charge of Baron ta Nor’fal, who was mouthing searing and cryptic oaths in his own language.

  Fargo sank down on a bench and then lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.

  “It’s all over now,” Dill said soothingly. “No accidents, no scandal. But it turned out to be a close shave, at that.”

  FARGO gratefully sucked smoke into his lungs.

  “I . . . yeah. What’s it all about? Here. Sit down and spill it!”

  The detective obeyed.

  “I told you how I figured the Draculas were smuggled into the Ganymedeans’ apartment. Well, the Baron wanted to make a blood transfusion necessary. For den Zony, that is. He let the Draculas attack him too, so suspicion wouldn’t be pointed his way.”

  “A transfusion?”

  “Vagga den Zony’s blood type was X-4—something no hospital can keep longer than a few hours. The Baron planned it all in advance. He and den Zony own Airflakes, you know. When they held their contest, ta Nor’fal checked up and found somebody who had blood type X-4—and something else, too. He arranged to let little Hek Daddabi, the Callistan swamp farmer, win the trip to Sky City. And he made sure he and den Zony would be here at the same time. The reason? So den Zony would get a transfusion of Daddabi’s blood.”

  “But Daddabi’s healthy,” Fargo objected. “Dr. Gallegher made certain of that before he performed the transfusion.”

  “The Red Plague,” Dill said. “That’s the answer. Worse than the old Black Plague on Earth. Three generations ago Ganymede was still periodically swept by the Red Plague. It billed Ganymedeans like mosquitoes in chlorine. The race built up natural immunity, and after that the Plague killed only a few animals. But Hek Daddabi’s grandfather left Ganymede to escape the Red Plague. He emigrated to Callisto, where the virus couldn’t exist. That was what my spacewire was about.”

  Fargo was beginning to understand.

  “You mean—”

  “Daddabi’s blood had a hereditary weakness, and the Baron took pains to find that out. Being on Callisto, Daddabi’s family, away from the virus, didn’t build up immunity. So if Daddabi went back to Ganymede and got a dose of the Red Plague, he’d die within a few hours. Two and two make four.

  “The Baron planned to get Vagga den Zony pumped full of Daddabi’s blood—which hasn’t any immunity to the Plague—and the Plague’s raging on Ganymede now. It’s only killing animals there, but once den Zony goes back, he won’t last long. But now that we know the answer, we can give den Zony artificial immunity by antitoxins. After a week here, he’ll be immunized again.”

  “Crawling comets!” Fargo gulped. “What a devil! But—why did he do it? He must have had some kind of a motive.”

  “I checked up on that, too. Vagga den Zony insisted that both he and the Baron turn most of the profits back into the Airflakes business, and den Zony owned fifty-one per cent, of the stock. The motive was Just greed. As usual.”

  Dill tossed his cigar away.

  “So that wraps it up. Sorry I had to stick my nose into the zoo and the hospital, but—well!” He shrugged. “I’m catching the next transport back to Earth.”

  “What?” Fargo jumped up.

  Before Dill could answer, two men appeared around a hedge. They were Morgansen, the curator of the zoo, and Dr. Gallegher. Their eyes were gleaming triumphantly at sight of their quarry.

  “I see you found him, Mr. Fargo,” Gallegher grinned.

  “We don’t want to be too hard on Dill,” Morgansen said. “After all, he’s pretty old. But I think an apology—”

  “An apology,” Fargo said softly. “That’s an idea. Yes, I think an apology’s necessary.”

  DOCTOR GALLEGHER smirked. The smirk vanished as Fargo continued.

  “You know your own business best, Dill. If it takes you into the hospital, the zoo, or my private office, that’s okay—you’ve got carte blanche from now on. I should have realized that before. Anyway—my apologies!” Morgansen gobbled and turned turkey-red.

  “But—but—but.”

  Dr. Gallegher reared back.

  “What? What are you saying?” Fargo grinned.

  “I’ve got to make out a report. See you later, Dill. Morgansen and Gallegher have something to say to you, I’m sure, so I’ll run along.”

  The doctor gasped.

  “Do you expect me to—to apologize—to this—”

  “Suit yourself,” Fargo said over his shoulder. “It’s up to you whether you want to keep your jobs or not.”

  He vanished. Dill found a fresh cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and waited.

  Gallegher exchanged a long, baffled glance with Morgansen. Then, as though the words caused him excruciating agony, he glared at Dill and muttered something that might-have been an apology. Morgansen echoed him.

  The two men, looking ready to explode, whirled and stamped out of the Maze. Dill chuckled.

  A voice behind him spoke.

  “Oh, I think you’re wonderful, Mr. Dill. I heard it all.”

  He turned. It was the pretty redhead who had been talking to him when the message had first come from the zoo.

  Her smile held hero-worship.

  “I’ve been waiting,” she said. “You said you’d be back. Imagine being a detective—here!”

  Dill sank down on the bench beside her.

  “Mph,” he grunted, his face, souring. “What’s your line?”

  “I’m a school-teacher. On my vacation.”

  “Yeah?” growled Tex Dill, clamping down viciously on the cigar. “Listen, you got it easy. I’d trade places with you in a minute. Me, now—”

  He was off!

  THE IRON STANDARD

  Padgett presents a neat problem in how to earn a living in a rigidly frozen economy. The explorers had inventions to sell—but there was a law against inventions!

  “So the ghost won’t walk for a year—Venusian time,” Thirkell said, spooning up cold beans with a disgusted air.

  Rufus Munn, the captain, looked up briefly from his task of de-cock-roaching the soup. “Dunno why we had to import these. A year plus four weeks, Steve. There’ll be a month at space before we hit Earth again.”

  Thirkell’s round, pudgy face grew solemn. “What happens in the meantime? Do we starve on cold beans?”

  Munn sighed, glancing through the open, screened port of the spaceship Goodwill to where dim figures moved in the mists outside. But he didn’t answer. Barton Underhill, supercargo and handy man, who had wangled his passage by virtue of his father’s wealth, grinned tightly and said, “What d’you expect? We don’t dare use fuel. There’s just enough to get us home. So it’s cold beans or nothing.”

  “Soon it will be nothing,” Thirkell said solemnly. “We have been spendthrifts. Wasting our substance in riotous living.”

  “Riotous
living!” Munn growled. “We gave most of our grub to the Venusians.”

  “Well,” Underhill murmured, “they fed us—for a month.”

  “Not now. There’s an embargo. What do they have against us, anyhow?”

  Munn thrust back his stool with sudden decision. “That’s something we’ll have to figure out. Things can’t go on like this. We simply haven’t enough food to last us a year. And we can’t live off the land—” He stopped as someone unzipped the valve screen and entered, a squat man with high cheekbones and a beak of a nose in a red-bronze face.

  “Find anything, Redskin?” Underhill asked.

  Mike Soaring Eagle tossed a plastisac on the table. “Six mushrooms. No wonder the Venusians use hydroponics. They have to. Only fungi will grow in this sponge of a world, and most of that’s poisonous. No use, skipper.”

  Munn’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. Where’s Bronson?”

  “Panhandling. But he won’t get a fal.” The Navaho nodded toward the port. “Here he comes now.” After a moment the others heard Bronson’s slow footsteps. The engineer came in, his face red as his hair. “Don’t ask me,” he murmured.

  “Don’t say a word, anybody. Me, a Kerry man, trying to bum a lousy fal from a shagreen-skinned so-and-so with an iron ring in his nose like a Ubangi savage. Think of it! The shame will stay with me forever.”

  “My sympathy,” Thirkell said. “But did you get any fals?”

  Bronson glared at him. “Would I have taken his dirty coins if he’d offered them?” the engineer yelled, his eyes bloodshot. “I’d have flung them in his slimy face, and you can take my word for it. I touch their rotten money? Give me some beans.” He seized a plate and morosely began to eat.

  Thirkell exchanged glances with Underhill. “He didn’t get any money,” the latter said.

  Bronson started back with a snort. “He asked me if I belonged to the Beggars’ Guild! Even tramps have to join a union on this planet!” Captain Munn scowled thoughtfully. “No, it isn’t a union, Bronson, or even much like the medieval guilds. The tarkomars are a lot more powerful and a lot less principled. Unions grew out of a definite social and economic background, and they fill a purpose—a check-and-balance system that keeps building. I’m not talking about unions; on Earth some of ’em are good—like the Air Transport—and some are graft-ridden, like Undersea Dredgers. The tarkomars are different. They don’t fulfill any productive purpose. They just keep the Venusian system in its backwater.”

  “Yes,” Thirkell said, “and unless we’re members, we aren’t allowed to work—at anything. And we can’t be members till we pay the initiation fee—a thousand sofals.”

  “Easy on those beans,” Underhill cautioned. “We’ve only ten more cans.”

  There was silence. Presently Munn passed cigarettes.

  “We’ve got to do something, that’s certain,” he said. “We can’t get food except from the Venusians, and they won’t give it to us. One thing in our favor: the laws are so arbitrary that they can’t refuse to sell us grub—it’s illegal to refuse legal tender.”

  Mike Soaring Eagle glumly sorted his six mushrooms. “Yeah. If we can get our hands on legal tender. We’re broke—broke on Venus—and we’ll soon be starving to death. If anybody can figure out an answer to that one—”

  This was in 1964, three years after the first successful flight to Mars, five years since Dooley and Hastings had brought their ship down in Mare Imbrium. The Moon, of course, was uninhabited, save by active but unintelligent algae. The big-chested, alert Martians, with their high metabolism and their brilliant, erratic minds, had been friendly, and it was certain that the cultures of Mars and Earth would not clash. As for Venus, till now, no ship had landed there.

  The Goodwill was the ambassador. It was an experiment, like the earlier Martian voyage, for no one knew whether or not there was intelligent life on Venus, Supplies for more than a year were stowed aboard, dehydrates, plastibulbs, concentrates, and vitamin foods, but every man of the crew had a sneaking hunch that food would be found in plenty on Venus.

  There was food—yes. The Venusians grew it, in their hydroponic tanks under the cities. But on the surface of the planet grew nothing edible at all. There was little animal or bird life, so hunting was impossible, even had the Earthmen been allowed to retain their weapons. And in the beginning it had seemed like a gala holiday after the arduous space trip—a year-long fete and carnival in an alien, fascinating civilization.

  It was alien, all right. The Venusians were conservative. What was good enough for their remote ancestors was quite good enough for them. They didn’t want changes, it seemed. Their current set-up had worked O.K. for centuries; why alter it now?

  The Earthmen meant change—that was obvious.

  Result: a boycott of the Earthmen.

  It was all quite passive. The first month had brought no trouble; Captain Munn had been presented with the keys of the capital city, Vyring, on the outskirts of which the Goodwill now rested, and the Venusians brought food in plenty—odd but tasty dishes from the hydroponic gardens. In return, the Earthmen were lavish with their own stores, depleting them dangerously.

  And the Venusian food spoiled quickly. There was no need to preserve it, for the hydroponic tanks turned out a steady, unfailing supply. In the end the Earthmen were left with a few weeks’ stock of the food they had brought with them, and a vast pile of garbage that had been lusciously appetizing a few days before.

  Then the Venusians stopped bringing their quick-spoiling fruits, vegetables, and meat-mushrooms and clamped down. The party was over. They had no intention of harming the Earthmen; they remained carefully friendly. But from now on it was Pay as You’re Served—and no checks cashed. A big meat-mushroom, enough for four hungry men, cost ten fals.

  Since the Earthmen had no fals, they got no meat-mushrooms—nor anything else.

  In the beginning it hadn’t seemed important. Not until they got down to cases and began to wonder exactly how they could get food.

  There was no way.

  So they sat in the Goodwill eating cold beans and looking like five of the Seven Dwarfs, a quintet of stocky, short, husky men, big-boned and muscular, especially chosen for their physiques to stand the rigors of space flight—and their brains, also specially chosen, couldn’t help them now.

  It was a simple problem—simple and primitive. They, the representatives of Earth’s mightiest culture, were hungry. They would soon be hungrier.

  And they didn’t have a fal—nothing but worthless gold, silver and paper currency. There was metal in the ship, but none of the pure metal they needed, except in alloys that couldn’t be broken down.

  Venus was on the iron standard.

  “—there’s got to be an answer,” Munn said stubbornly, his hard-bitten, harsh face somber. He pushed back his plate with an angry gesture. “I’m going to see the Council again.”

  “What good will that do?” Thirkell wanted to know. “We’re on the spot, there’s no getting around it. Money talks.”

  “Just the same, I’m going to talk to Jorust,” the captain growled. “She’s no fool.”

  “Exactly,” Thirkell said cryptically.

  Munn stared at him, beckoned to Mike Soaring Eagle, and turned toward the valve. Underhill jumped up eagerly.

  “May I go?”

  Bronson gloomily toyed with his beans. “Why do you want to go? You couldn’t even play a slot machine in Vyring’s skid row—if they had slot machines. Maybe you think if you tell ’em your old man’s a Tycoon of Amalgamated Ores, they’ll break down and hand out meal tickets—eh?”

  But his tone was friendly enough, and Underhill merely grinned. Captain Munn said, “Come along, if you want, but hurry up.” The three men went out into the steaming mists, their feet sloshing through sticky mud.

  It wasn’t uncomfortably hot; the high winds of Venus provided for quick evaporation, a natural air conditioning that kept the men from feeling the humidity. Munn referred to his compass. The outskirts of
Vyring were half a mile away, but the fog was, as usual, like pea soup. On Venus it is always bird-walking weather. Silently the trio slogged on.

  “I thought Indians knew how to live off the land,” Underhill presently remarked to the Navaho. Mike Soaring Eagle looked at him quizzically.

  “I’m not a Venusian Indian.” he explained. “Maybe I could make a bow and arrow and bring down a Venusian—but that wouldn’t help, unless he had a lot of sofals in his purse.”

  “We might eat him,” Underhill murmured. “Wonder what roast Venusian would taste like?”

  “Find out and you can write a best seller when you get back home,” Munn remarked. “If you get back home. Vyring’s got a police force, chum.”

  “Oh, well,” Underhill said, and left it at that. “Here’s the Water Gate. Lord—I smell somebody’s dinner!”

  “So do I,” the Navaho grunted, “but I hoped nobody would mention it. Shut up and keep walking.”

  The wall around Vyring was in the nature of a dike, not a fortification, Venus was both civilized and unified; there were, apparently, no wars and no tariffs—a natural development for a world state. Air transports made sizzling noises as they shot past, out of sight in the fog overhead. Mist shrouded the streets, torn into tatters by occasional huge fans. Vyring, shielded from the winds, was unpleasantly hot, except indoors where artificial air conditioning could be brought into use.

  Underhill was reminded of Venice: the streets were canals. Water craft of various shapes and sizes drifted, glided, or raced past. Even the beggars traveled by water. There were rutted, muddy footpaths beside the canals, but no one with a fal to his name ever walked.

  The Earthmen walked, cursing fervently as they splashed through the muck. They were, for the most part, ignored.

  A water taxi scooted toward the bank, its pilot, wearing the blue badge of his tarkomar, hailing them. “May I escort you?” he wanted to know.