Rogue in Space
Page 17
“Good, then you won’t have any preconceptions about it, and it’ll probably be different here from on Earth anyway. Find some wire and make hooks, try to find out what bait they’ll take. Or figure a way of making nets. Or make yourself a fish spear and try it out; the water’s clear and there are places where it’s shallow enough. Or—hell, just figure us a way of getting some fish, that’s all. Okay?”
Hauser nodded, not too happily.
“And us?” Bea asked. I suppose you’ve got our day planned too.”
“I’d suggest you gather firewood for a starter, plenty of it. After that, we’ll see. If I find a clay deposit you can help me get a start on making adobe bricks. Or if Gardin gets game, you can try your hand at skinning it—if it’s got fur—and cooking it. Or see what you can figure out in the way of net making to help Hauser.” He grinned. “Don’t worry; there’ll be plenty for you to do.”
“I’m not worrying,” Bea said. “Not about that” She glared at him.
Crag said, “I’m not a boss here. Those weren’t orders, but they’re all things that have to be done if we’re going to survive. Anybody want to trade assignments, or add any other suggestions?”
“Yes,” Gert said. “This is a hell of a place to have brought us. We should have gone to Venus.”
“Maybe we should have,” Gardin said. “But it’s too late now. There isn’t enough fuel in the ship even to get us back to Mars. We made our choice when we took off from Mars—and you can blame Crag if you want for talking us into this, but that isn’t going to change things. Let’s get going.”
They got going. Crag had first luck; he found an excellent clay deposit only fifty yards upstream. He made a few bricks and put them in the sun to see how long they’d take to dry, and then came back. Bea and Gert had gathered some firewood and were moodily watching—not helping—Hauser file a barb on wire he’d bent into the approximate shape of a fishhook.
Clay told them about the clay and suggested they come and help him make more bricks.
Bea glared at him defiantly. “We talked that over, Crag. We don’t want other quarters—not mud huts, anyhow. We’re willing to sleep in the ship. You’re the one who wants a private house and why should we help you?”
Crag sighed but decided not to argue. If the women were going to be recalcitrant, it was up to their men to put them into line and he wasn’t going to mix in their domestic problems. Sooner or later they’d get tired of the spaceship bunks and change their minds. And when the food supply of the ship ran out they’d be in much better mood to help with other tasks.
He went back to his clay deposit and his brick making.
Hauser caught no fish that day. Gardin came back in late afternoon carrying one small rabbit-like animal. He seemed discouraged. “Saw several of these but wasted most of my shots. My God, but the things are fast.”
He said he’d seen one bigger animal but at too great a distance to make a good guess at what type it was, and he couldn’t stalk it closely enough to get in a shot at it.
“Guess I’m a better city hunter than a country one,” he admitted. “I can follow a man across a city for days and never lose him, but wild animals—guess it’s out of my line. How’d the rest of you do?”
Just looks answered him, from Hauser and the two women.
Crag shook his head slowly. “Gardin, I guess I made a mistake. If you don’t like it here, if this isn’t a life for you, I guessed wrong. Do you still want to go to Venus and take your chances there?”
“Want to? Crag—maybe I could adjust here if Bea could, but all I have to do is to look at her to get the answer to that. Yes, we want to go to Venus. I’ll swap a million dollars’ worth of jewels for enough fuel to get us there.”
“Keep the jewels,” Crag said. “The tank isn’t almost empty; there’s enough in it to get you to Venus. I jimmied the gauge on the way here, once while the rest of you were sleeping. I wanted to give Cragon a chance; I wanted you to land here thinking you were here for keeps. Take the ship and get going.”
Both the women had leaped to their feet. Hauser was grinning.
Crag nodded. “Take it. Just unload whatever supplies you won’t need on the trip. And whatever tools, and all the weapons and ammunition except a sidearm apiece for you and Hauser. And take this.” He handed Gardin a thick roll of bills, the money he’d taken from the two boxes that had been in the Luxor safe.
Gardin took it. “What’s this?”
Crag said, “I never counted it. But it’s something over half a million dollars—or wastepaper. Here it’s wastepaper, so you might as well have it. Now get going on that unloading, all of you.”
Gardin seemed puzzled, almost reluctant, but the others worked faster, probably, than they’d ever worked at anything before, probably afraid Crag would change his mind.
An hour later, standing beside a tarpaulin covered pile of supplies that represented everything the ship could spare, he watched it go.
He felt dull inside, neither happy nor unhappy. This was the way it was going to be. This was his world and here he was going to stay until he died or was killed. He’d be lonesome, sure, but he was used to that. And this was infinitely better than the cesspools of corruption that Earth, Mars and Venus had become. This was a tough world but an honest one. It was, and would be, his world. During the time the alien who had created this world had been in Crag’s mind, he’d learned enough to make the world for which Crag was fitted.
It was getting dusk as he watched the speck out of sight, too late to do any more brick making tonight. Almost time to start a fire; he might as well get it laid and ready to light. He started toward the pile of wood the women had gathered.
But he’d taken only a step when the voice of the alien spoke in his mind.
“You did right, Crag. Like yourself, they were rebels against a bad society. But rebellion had made them decadent rather than tough. I knew when I first contacted their minds that they wouldn’t stay.”
“I should have guessed myself,’ Crag said. “Except Gardin—I thought he might make it.”
“He came closest. He might have if he’d been alone, not weakened by having the wrong woman.”
Crag laughed. “Is there any such thing as a right woman?”
“Your subconscious mind knows that there is, Crag. One and only one for you.”
Anger flared in Crag. “You dared—”
“Don’t forget, Crag, that happened when I’d just revived you from being dead, before I knew you resented invasion of privacy. I told you I’d never enter your mind again and I have not. I can put my voice, as it were, in your mind; but what my mind receives from yours is only what you speak aloud or what you deliberately project to me as a thought. So I know only what was in your mind then—but I doubt that it has changed.”
Crag didn’t answer, and the voice went on. “Do you remember what happened to Judeth, Crag? The disintegrator, yes. But before that happened I had studied her mind and her body; she was the first of the three of you on that asteroid that I studied. But I did study her and I have not forgotten the position of a single atom or molecule. And those atoms, even after disintegration of her body, were still there. It was easy to segregate and preserve them.”
“For what?” Crag almost shouted. “She’s dead!”
“So were you, Crag. What is death? You should know. But I saved her, for you. Until you were ready, until you came to me as I knew you would. It was a relatively easy thing to restore life to your body and a relatively difficult one to replace every atom in every molecule of—”
“Can you? Are you sure?”
“I already have. She’s coming this way now; if you turn you’ll see her.”
Crag turned. And stood trembling, unable for the moment to think, let alone to move.
“You won’t need to explain anything to her, Crag. I put knowledge in her mind of everything that has happened. And I can tell you that she is not only willing but able—But I withdraw from your mind now, from both your
minds. I’ll let you tell—”
But Judeth was in his arms by then and Crag had quit thinking or hearing thoughts in his mind.
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Also by Fredric Brown
Martians, Go Home
Rogue in Space
The Lights in the Sky are Stars
The Mind Thing
What Mad Universe?
Fredric Brown (1906-1972)
Fredric Brown was born in Cincinnati in 1906, and began his career as a science fiction writer in 1941. As well as his SF, Brown was also an Edgar Award-winning crime writer. Although the author of a number of SF and detective novels, he remains most famous for his prolific short story writing.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Fredric Brown 1957
All rights reserved.
The right of Fredric Brown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10262 0
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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