Space On My Hands

by Fredric Brown

  Caquer paused and frowned thoughtfully.

  “He was undoubtedly psychopathic, though, and we don’t dare even guess what all his plans were,” he continued. “You understand how the goggles worked to neutralize the wheel, don’t you, Icicle?”

  “I think so. That was brilliant, Rod. It’s like when you take a moving picture of a turning wheel, isn’t it? If the camera synchronizes with the turning wheel, so that each successive picture shows it after a complete revolution, then it looks like it’s standing still when you show the movie.”

  Caquer nodded.

  “That’s it exactly,” he said. “Just luck I had access to those goggles, though. For a second I could see a man wearing a helmet up there on the balcony — but that was all I had to know.”

  “But Rod, when you rushed out on the balcony, you didn’t have the goggles on any more. Couldn’t he have stopped you, by hypnosis?”

  “Well, he didn’t. I guess there wasn’t time for him to take over control of me. He did flash an illusion at me. It wasn’t either Barr Maxon or Willem Deem I saw standing there at the last minute. It was you, Jane.”

  “I?”

  “Yep, you. I guess he knew I’m in love with you, and that’s the first thing flashed into his mind; that I wouldn’t dare use the sword if I thought it was you standing there. But it wasn’t you, in spite of the evidence of my eyes, so I swung it.”

  He shuddered slightly, remembering the will power he had needed to bring that sword down.

  “The worst of it was that I saw you standing there like I’ve always wanted to see you — with your arms out toward me, and looking at me as though you loved me.”

  “Like this, Rod?”

  And this time he was not too dumb to get the idea.

  nothing sirius

  PLEASANTLY, I was taking the last coins out of the machines and counting them while Ma was entering the figures in the little red book. I called them out as usual. Nice figures they were.

  Yes, we’d had a good play on both of the Sirius planets, Freda and Thor. Especially on Thor. Those little Earth colonies out there are starved to death for entertainment of any kind, and money doesn’t mean a thing to them. They’d stood in line to get into our tent and push their coins into the machines. So even with the plenty high expense of the trip, we’d done all right by ourselves.

  Yes, they were right comforting, those figures Ma was entering. ’Course she’d add them up wrong, but then Ellen would straighten it out when Ma finally gave up. Ellen’s good at figures, and got a good one herself, even if I do say it of my own daughter. Credit for that goes to Ma, anyway, not to me. I’m built on the general lines of a space tug.

  I put back the coin-box of the Rocket Race and looked up. “Ma,” I started to say. Then the door of the pilot’s compartment opened and John Lane stood there. Ellen, across the table from Ma, put down her book and looked up too. She was all eyes and they were shining.

  Johnny saluted smartly, the regulation salute with which a private-ship pilot is supposed to honor the owner and captain of the ship. It always got under my skin, that salute, but I couldn’t talk him out of it because the rules said he should do it.

  He said, “Object ahead, Captain Wherry.”

  “Object?” I queried. “What kind of object?”

  You see, from Johnny’s voice and Johnny’s face you couldn’t guess whether it meant anything or not. Mars City Polytech trains ’em to be strictly deadpan and Johnny had graduated magna cum laude. He’s a nice kid but he’d announce the end of the world in the same tone of voice he’d used to announce dinner, if it was a pilot’s job to announce dinner.

  “It seems to be a planet, sir,” was all he said.

  Quite a while it took for his words to sink in.

  “A planet?” I asked, not particularly brilliantly. I stared at him, hoping that he’d been drinking or something. Not because I had any objections to his seeing a planet sober, but because if Johnny ever unbent to the stage of taking a good drink, the alky would probably dissolve some of the starch out of his backbone. Then I’d have someone to swap stories with. It gets lonesome traveling through space with two women and a conscientious Polytech grad who follows the rules.

  “A planet, sir. An object of planetary dimensions, I should say. Diameter three thousand miles, distance two million, course apparently an orbit about Sirius A.”

  “Johnny,” I began, “we’re inside the orbit of Thor, which is Sirius I, which means it’s the first planet of Sirius and how can there be a planet inside of that? You wouldn’t be kidding me, Johnny?”

  “You may inspect the teleplate, sir, and check my calculations,” he replied stiffly.

  I got up and went into the pilot’s compartment. There was a disc in the center of the teleplate, all right. So Johnny wasn’t seeing things. Checking his calculations was something else again. My mathematics end at counting coins out of coin machines. But I was willing to take his word for it.

  “Johnny,” I almost shouted, “We’ve discovered a new planet. Ain’t that something?”

  “Yes, sir,” he commented, in his usual, matter-of-fact voice.

  It was something, but not much. I mean, the Sirius system hasn’t been colonized long and it wasn’t too surprising that a little three thousand mile planet hadn’t been noticed yet. Especially as the orbits swing high, wide and handsome on Thor and Freda. So far out, they’d be colder than Pluto if the Dog Star wasn’t twenty-six times as bright as Sol.

  There hadn’t been room for Ma and Ellen to follow us into the pilot’s compartment, but they stood looking in at the doorway and I moved to one side so they could see the disc in the viewplate.

  “How soon do we get there, Johnny?” Ma wanted to know.

  “Our point of nearest approach on this course will be within an hour, Mrs. Wherry,” he replied. “We come within half a million miles of it.”

  “Oh, do we?” I wanted to know.

  “Unless, sir, you think it advisable to change course and give it more clearance.”

  I gave clearance to my throat instead and looked at Ma and Ellen and saw it would be okay by them. “Johnny,” I continued, “we’re going to give it less clearance. I’ve always hankered to see a new planet all to myself. We’re going to land there.”

  He said, “Yes, sir,” and saluted, but there was, I thought, disapproval in his eyes. Oh, he’d have had cause for it if there had been. You never know what you’ll run into bursting into virgin territory out here. A cargo of canvas and slot-machines isn’t the proper equipment for exploring, now is it?

  But the Perfect Pilot never questions an owner’s orders, doggone him! Johnny sat down and started punching keys on the calculator and we eased out to let him do it.

  “Ma,” I said, “I’m a blamed fool.”

  “You would be if you weren’t,” she came back. I grinned when I got that sorted out, and looked at Ellen.

  But she wasn’t looking at me. She had that dreamy look in her eyes again. It made me want to go into the pilot’s compartment and take a poke at Johnny to see if it would wake him up.

  “Listen, honey,” I said, “that Johnny —”

  But something burned the side of my face and I knew it was Ma looking at me, so I shut up. I got out a deck of cards and played solitaire until we landed.

  Johnny popped out of the pilot’s compartment. And saluted.

  “Landed, sir. Atmosphere one-oh-sixteen on the gauge.”

  “And what,” Ellen asked, “does that mean in English?”

  “It’s breathable, Miss Wherry. A bit high in nitrogen and low in oxygen compared to Earth air, but nevertheless breathable.”

  He was a caution, that young man was, when it came to being precise.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” I wanted to know.

  “Your orders, sir.”

  “Shucks with my orders, Johnny. Let’s get the door open and get going.”

  He saluted, and we got the door open. That was that. Johnny stepped out fi
rst, strapping on a pair of heatojectors as he went. The rest of us were right behind him.

  It was cool outside, but not cold. The landscape looked just like Thor, with bare rolling hills of hard-baked, greenish clay. There was plant life, a brownish bushy stuff that looked something like tumbleweed.

  I took a look up to gauge the time and Sirius was almost at the zenith, which meant Johnny had landed us smack in the middle of the day side.

  “Got any idea, Johnny,” I asked, “what the period of rotation is?”

  “I had time for only a rough check, sir. It came out twenty-one hours, seventeen and a half minutes.”

  Rough check, he had said!

  Ma answered. “That’s rough enough for us. Gives us time for a walk and what are we waiting for?”

  “For the ceremony, Ma,” I told her. “We got to name the place, don’t we? And where did you put that bottle of champagne we were saving for my birthday? I reckon this is a more important occasion.”

  She told me where, and I went and got it.

  “Got any suggestions for a name, Johnny?” I asked. “You saw it first.”

  “No, sir.”

  I said, “Trouble is that Thor and Freda are wrong now. I mean, Thor is Sirius I and Freda is Sirius II, and this orbit is inside theirs, so they ought to be ‘two’ and ‘three’ respectively. Or else this ought to be Sirius O. Which means it’s Nothing Sirius.”

  Ellen smiled, and I think Johnny would have except that it would have been undignified, while Ma just grunted. “William —” she began, and would have gone on in that vein if something hadn’t happened.

  Something looked up over the top of the nearest hill. Ma was the only one facing that way and she let out a whoop and grabbed me. Then we all turned and looked. It was the head of something that looked like an ostrich, only it must have been bigger than an elephant. Also there was a collar and a blue polka-dot bow tie around the thin neck of the critter, and it wore a hat. The hat was bright yellow and had a long purple feather. The thing looked at us a minute, winked quizzically and then pulled its head back.

  None of us said anything for a minute, and then I took a deep breath.

  “That,” I said, “tears it. Planet, I dub thee Nothing Sirius.”

  I bent down and hit the champagne bottle against the clay; but it just dented the clay and wouldn’t break. I tried again and looked around for a rock to hit it on. There wasn’t any rock.

  I took out a corkscrew from my pocket and opened the bottle instead. We all had a drink except Johnny, who doesn’t drink or smoke. Me, I had a good long one. Then I poured a brief libation on the ground and recorked the bottle. I had a hunch I might need it again, and maybe need it worse than the planet did. There was lots of whiskey in the ship and some Martian greenbrew, but no more champagne.

  I said, “Well, here we go.”

  I caught Johnny’s eye and he said, “Do you think it wise, sir, in view of the fact that there are — uh — inhabitants?”

  “Inhabitants?” I interrupted him. “Johnny, whatever that thing that stuck its head over the hill was, it wasn’t an inhabitant. And if it pops up again, I’ll conk it with this bottle.”

  But just the same, before we started out I went inside the Chitterling and got a couple more heatojectors. I stuck one in my belt and gave Ellen the other. Ellen’s a better shot than I am, but Ma couldn’t hit the side of an administration building at ten paces with a spraygun, so I didn’t give her one.

  We started off, and sort of by mutual consent, we went the other direction from where we’d seen the whatever-it-was. The hills all looked alike for a while and as soon as we were over the first one, we were out of sight of the Chitterling. I noticed Johnny looking at his wrist-compass every couple of minutes, and knew he’d know the way home.

  Nothing happened for three hills and then Ma said, “Look,” and we looked.

  About twenty yards off to our left there was a purple bush. There was a buzzing sound coming from it. The buzzing sound came from a lot of things that were flying around the bush. They looked like birds until you looked a second time and then you saw that their wings weren’t moving. But they zoomed up and down and around just the same. I tried to look at their heads, but where their heads ought to be there was just a blur. A circular blur.

  “They got propellers,” Ma said. “Like old-fashioned airships used to have.”

  It did look that way.

  I looked at Johnny and he looked at me, and we started over toward that bush. But the birds, or whatever, flew away quick, the minute we took a step. They skimmed off low to the ground, and were out of sight in a minute.

  We started off again, none of us saying anything, and Ellen came up and walked alongside me. We were just far enough ahead to be out of earshot, and she said, “Pop —”

  And didn’t go on with it until I answered, “What, kid?”

  “Nothing,” she replied sorrowful-like. “Skip it.”

  So of course I knew what she’d wanted to talk about, but I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say except to cuss out Mars Polytech and that wouldn’t have done any good. Mars Polytech has one trouble only. It’s too darned good for its own good, and so are its ramrods of graduates. After a dozen years or so outside, though, some of them manage to unbend and limber up.

  But Johnny hadn’t been out that long, by eleven years or so. The chance to pilot the Chitterling had been a break for him, of course, as his first job. A few years with us and he’d be qualified to skipper something bigger. He’d qualify to jump up there a lot faster than if he’d had to start in as a minor officer on a bigger ship.

  Only trouble was that he was too good-looking and didn’t know it. He didn’t know anything they hadn’t taught him at Polytech and all they’d taught him there was math and astrogation and how to salute, and they hadn’t taught him how not to.

  “Ellen — ” I started to say.

  “Yes, Pop?”

  “Uh — nothing. Skip it.” I hadn’t meant to say that at all, but suddenly she grinned at me, and I grinned back, and it was just like we’d talked the whole thing over. True, we hadn’t got anywhere, but then we wouldn’t have even if we had, if you know what I mean, and I don’t think you do.

  So just then we came to the top of a small rise, and Ellen and I stopped because just ahead of us was the blank end of a paved street.

  An ordinary, every day plastipaved street just like you’d see in any city on Earth, with curb and sidewalk and gutters and the painted traffic-line down the middle. Only it ran out to nowhere, where we stood, and, at least until it went over the top of the next rise, there wasn’t a house or a vehicle or a creature on it.

  I looked at Ellen and she looked at me, and then we both looked at Ma and Johnny Lane, who had just caught up to us. I said, “What is it, Johnny?”

  “It seems to be a street, sir.”

  He caught the look I was giving him and flushed a little. He bent over and examined the paving closely, and when he straightened up his eyes were even more surprised. I queried, “Well, what is it, caramel icing?”

  “It’s permaplast, sir. We aren’t the discoverers of this planet, because that stuffs an Earth product.”

  “Um,” I sort of mumbled, “Couldn’t the natives here have discovered the same process? The same — uh — ingredients might be available.”

  “Yes, sir. But the blocks are trade-marked, if you’ll look closely.”

  I replied, “Couldn’t the natives have —” Then I shut up because even I saw how silly that was. But it’s tough to think your party has discovered a new planet and then have Earth-trademarked paving bricks on the first street you come to. “But what’s a street doing here at all?” I wanted to know.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Ma. “So what are we standing here for?”

  So we pushed on, and on the next rise we saw a building. A two-story red brick with a sign on it that read. “Bon Ton Restaurant.” It was in Old English script lettering.

 
; I said, “I’ll be a —” But Ma clapped her hand over my mouth before I could finish, which was maybe just as well for what I’d been going to say had been quite inadequate. There was the building only a hundred yards ahead, facing us at a sharp turn in the street.

  I started walking faster, and I got there first by a few paces. I opened the door, and started to walk in. Then I stopped cold on the doorstep, because there wasn’t any “in” to that building. It was a false front, like a cinema setting, and all you could see through the door was more of those rolling, greenish hills.

  I stepped back and looked up at the “Bon-Ton Restaurant” sign, and the others walked up and looked in the doorway, which I’d left open. They came back and we just stood there until Ma got impatient and said, “Well, what are you going to do?”

  “What do you want me to do?” I wanted to know. “Go in and order you a lobster dinner? With champa — Hey, I forgot!”

  The champagne bottle was still in my jacket pocket and I took it out and passed it to Ma and then to Ellen, and then I finished what was left of it, and I drank it too fast, because the bubbles tickled my nose and made me sneeze.

  I felt ready for anything, though, and I took another walk through the doorway of the building that wasn’t there. Maybe, I figured, I could see some sign of how recently it had been put up, or something. But there weren’t any signs that I could see. The inside — or rather the back of the front, if you know what I’m talking about, was smooth and plain like a sheet of glass. It looked like a synthetic of some sort.

  I took a look around at the ground back of it, but all I could see were a few holes that looked like insect holes. And that’s what they must have been because there was a big, black cockroach sitting (or standing, because how can you tell whether a cockroach is sitting or standing?) by one of them. I took a step closer and he popped down the hole.

  I felt a little better as I went front through the doorway. I said, “Ma, I saw a cockroach. And you know what was peculiar about it?”