Amazing Vignettes

by Jerry

  “What action can I take against him?”

  “None—none whatsoever!” Brady ruffled the papers in front of him. “There it is, in black and white. He’s got you and there’s nothing you can do—unless you want to look it over.”

  “I can’t touch him. I own the Martian land and that’s it.”

  “Right, Jim.”

  I had enough experience to act as my own geologist and minerologist, so I rented a shuttle rocket and two crewmen, and visited my “pig in a poke”.

  As we blew across the pale reddish sands of Mars, spotted here and there with lichenous vegetation, I admit my optimistic feelings didn’t improve any. There is a wild beauty about Mars and of course the ever-present sense of alienation, remoteness from home, Man-conquering space, and all that sort of thing, but men are economic animals and my mind was thinking of how much I’d invested in barrenness.

  We reached my area, which of course appeared no different from the surrounding desolation. Pale reddish sand and pale greenish lichenous matter.

  With one of the two men, I suited and started to foot-range the plot. There are three economic possibilities in Martian land: water, oxygen, and copper. The first two concern Mars alone. My plot showed nothing hydrous, not even calcium sulfate, which some plants were working near New Sacramento and which many more would eventually open up. There was no pod-oxygen conversion plant life either. That I knew at once through aerial survey.

  Then in a gullied, hilly Marain we stumbled upon the hut. It was a standard luminum “Spherocell” and inside was the dessicated body of the man who’d supposedly hosed me. Now I knew why I hadn’t been able to locate Fitzhugh.

  If was all down neatly, for Fitzhugh had known he was going to die. His transmitters were smashed and he had no means of communicating. When the oxygen ran out, he opened his suit and died very quickly.

  The letter, though, explained everything.

  “. . . I knew I’d made a mistake,” it said in part, “for I had the certain feeling there were rich copper deposits here—it was a geological necessity. Hunter, if this is brought to your attention, know that my original intentions were to skin you—but that’s not going to happen. I intended to easily buy back this land. Check my notes and you’ll find fantastic amounts of copper. With Terran reserves absolutely exhausted, you can write your own ticket—they’ll probably build a city right here. . . .”

  When Brady learned what had happened, he couldn’t believe it. But the copper deposits are being worked and the ships are bringing it home with plenty of big fat credits for me. Brady has to caution me . . . I’m a sucker for buying blind, for buying any old “pig in a poke”—Martian or Terran.

  After Armageddon

  June Lurie

  BY NIGHTFALL I reached a small town. I knew I was still in Illinois because I hadn’t reached the Mississippi. Small towns were safe. The bombers and the dusters hadn’t hit the little ones—though they’d hit about everything else.

  I walked into the town cautiously. Even if it was dark there was always the chance of an ambush. I clutched the beat-up Winchester tightly and shrugged closer into my Army overcoat, the one I’d picked up from the abandoned depot. You never get over the eerie feeling of entering the dead towns.

  Here and there I could spot dully phosphorescent piles, human beings, victims of the radiation sickness who had crawled away and died, their glowing remains still testifying, to the deadly effect of the dusters. Even the cool night air held the delicate taint of death. The living were so few—and they turned on each other. I thought back to my narrow escape two days ago in Peoria—where the two had tried to jump me. They were dead now, but I wouldn’t have shot if they’d have been friendly. But then what had they thought?

  There was a sharp crack and automatically I dropped. Overhead the keening whistle of a bullet brought me to my senses. I remained flat against the ground, not daring to move. Gradually I edged myself to a row of hedges and, under their shelter, with the aid of darkness, I started to work myself toward the nearest building, an abandoned house. Someone evidently was ready to drop strangers without any questions. Who could blame them?

  I rounded the corner of the house. I stopped dead in my tracks. My bushwhacker was standing, concealed by the edge of the building, peering cautiously into the street, rifle cradled at the ready.

  Without hesitating, I ran up behind the figure. I didn’t want to shoot for fear someone else might be near, though I doubted it. I was on the stranger and, with one swift chopping blow, I rabbit-punched the figure into silence. As it dropped to the ground, I saw with surprise that it was a girl, dirty-faced and fatigued, but a girl.

  I bent over to examine her closer and my cars caught the stealthiest of sounds. I twirled and dropped to the ground, at the same time bringing up my rifle. I fired more by instinct than by aim, and the man who had come rushing me out of the dark dropped to the ground.

  Quickly I checked him. He was dead. I went back to the girl; she was coming to slowly, groans emanating from her. I noticed then her odd appearance. There was the faintest glow of phosphorescence about her face. This girl had been dusted! I stepped back in automatic alarm, dragging her rifle out of reach with my foot as I did so. She came to and sat up, rubbing the back of her neck.

  She glared at me with pure hatred, stifling a little cry that sprang to her lips when she saw the crumpled figure of the man lying there.

  “You killed him!” she said, spitting out the words. “You didn’t have to kill Jim!”

  “You tried to kill me,” I replied, “and so did he. Should I die to make you happy?”

  The hatred faded to a sort of hurt puzzlement. “We were afraid,” she said. “We figured you’d kill us if we didn’t. . . .”

  “That’s all it is,” I answered, “killing, killing and more killing. Don’t people want to live any more? Wasn’t the bombing bad enough? Wasn’t the dusting hell? Did you see Chicago get it? Did you see them die by the hundreds of thousands?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Are you sick?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered. “I don’t think so. I just got a touch of the dust. Jim says—said—I’ll get over it.”

  “I’m going South where it’s warm,” I said, “you can come with me if you want—but I don’t trust you.”

  She shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

  We slept in a house that night, but I manacled her hands to a radiator before I went to sleep. I could tell from the look iii her eyes that if she got within reach of a gun, she’d kill me. Before we dozed off I learned her simple story—no different from that of thousands of us. She’d escaped with nothing but a touch of the dust, a miracle survivor. She’d met the man Jim, and they’d gone off together. Human beings were too scarce to be choosy about . . . They too were going South, hoping they’d run into a bunch of people, yet knowing that the odds were against it. The country was swept clean, clean as a hound’s tooth, and it would be that way, I told her, as long as we stayed in industrial areas. Only West and South could we hope to find people who might have missed the fearful barrage of the dust. As for the bomb victims, the less said the better.

  Julie and I made our way South. When we found a car we’d find no gas and when we found an occasional sealed drum of gas which hadn’t evaporated, there’d be no car. I manacled her each night, but it wasn’t long before that wasn’t necessary and her memory of Jim, casual at best—perhaps as it was of me—passed.

  Several times we hid from small groups, armed to the teeth. We were fearful of making contact, because strangers could not trust each other. There were still troops of the invaders around, we could be sure of that, and they’d give us short shrift.

  We were on the outskirts of Mobile late one night. From the glow we could see we’d have to skirt that one too, We’d started off the side of the road when we heard the sound of an engine.

  “Quick!” I whispered, “get down.” We crouched and waited, like the hunted animals we felt we were
.

  A good quiet-engined car came down the road. It was piled high with cans—gas-, of course—and there were two uniformed figures in the front. They were invaders.

  The car had almost to come to a complete stop to negotiate around a pile of smashed trucks and cars. Simultaneously, Julie and I fired. With a soughing sound the car’s motor died as it ploughed, gently into the heap and came to rest.

  We had an automobile. And we had gasoline. The rest is anticlimactic. We went Southeast, figuring the Florida area would have been hit the least. And that’s the “Way it was.

  It was ticklish making ourselves known to people, but we did it, mainly by Julie’s astute maneuverings—and not backed up with a gunpoint. These people didn’t really appreciate the magnitude of the dusting and the bombings up North.

  Activity is commencing again, not much outside of simple farming and shopwork, but society is reviving. Julie and I haven’t had a baby yet, but you never can tell—the dust has got to die sometime and the doc says it won’t be long. We live and hope and wait.

  No Glamor in Space

  Sid Overman

  ON SEVENTY-THIRD street the big stone and aluminum hulk of the Archives Building looms up. Most people think of it as a glorified space library; few realize that it is a lot more than a library. It’s the clearing house of the Solar System, so to speak, and between its books and films, its logs, and above all the conversation of the spacemen who spend time in the Club or the Bar, you can find out just about anything about space that you want.

  Space travel has only been with us thirty-five years, yet it seems like an eternity—which is the main reason I’ve become its historian. Interplanetary asked me to sift through the records and bring some coherence out of the enormous amounts of data that have been accumulated. That’s the reason I spend so much time at Archives—and a good portion of that in the Bar.

  One evening the conversation had got around to predictions and prognostications. Baines, a long, skinny pilot who’d recently been shifted to the Jovian run—the satellites, that is—was nursing a glass in his hands and talking:

  “. . . I don’t think anybody can predict the future of space travel. The technological advances are progressing at such a furious rate that any prediction is obsolete before it’s been spread.”

  I looked kind of doubtful. He glanced at me.

  “Don’t you believe it?” he asked. The question was rhetorical. He went on. “Look, fifteen years ago we were still proud of the space stations and the Luna run. Now look at us. We’re running out to the Jovian satellites. Neptune’s next, then Pluto. Would you have guessed that fifteen years ago?”

  “No,” I admitted, “I wouldn’t have. But then Atomics has done a terrific job. It looks like the old science-fiction hoys were lighter than they knew. They had man flitting around the Solar System just about as rapidly as its happened.”

  “I have to agree,” Baines said, “they didn’t exaggerate at that. All in all, those old writers knew pretty well the course of coming events. As prognosticators they weren’t too bad. Except for one thing.”

  “What was that?”

  “War and fighting.”

  “War and fighting?” I echoed. “What do you mean? There hasn’t been any of that in space.”

  “I’m speaking of Space Patrol actions, naturally.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, “but what do you mean about the science-fiction writers’ being all wrong?”

  “Did you ever read one of those old-timers’ descriptions of a fight between rochets or space craft? They described it as sort of a glorified battle between aircraft here on Earth. They missed one point. They didn’t realize that the speeds and velocities of space ships are so fantastically high that the ordinary ideas of combat, as felt by them, simply don’t apply to battle in the void.”

  “Come to think of it,” I agreed, “I see what you mean. I can remember the rockets zooming toward one another, firing rockets and guns and in general creating havoc.”

  “It’s a joke,” Baines smiled. “Let me tell you how tough the idea of real space fighting is . . .”

  He took another pull at his drink and then began.

  “Four weeks ago,” he said, “Command ordered me to take a patrol cruiser and hunt down and knock out somebody who was landing and raiding the Martian Colony Outposts. That sounds like a straightforward assignment with no strings attached. The orders read: ‘you will locate and destroy this marauder . . .’ ! Just like that. The only trouble was, they didn’t say how.”

  “All we did then was sit on Zeres Base and monitor the radio. Fortunately we caught the report as soon as it came in. A raid had been made on a Polar Colony, a fortune in tools and drugs taken, and murder done. The minute the alarm came in, we got a radar fix of the raider and were into space after him.

  “We followed the raider. It was a conventional atomic and it “headed straight out of the Martian orbit, eo following it was no problem. But its potential velocity was as great as ours, of course, and as soon as it should find out it was being followed it could make evasive maneuvers. That would happen the minute it located any hostile action on our part.

  “We got close to this straight line course and I had every hope of being able to sneak a high-speed projectile into it. Our computers worked like mad making up an orbit and a trajectory—all wasted. By the time we got close enough to use a projectile, their scanners picked us up and they changed course. Just like that—all the computation was wasted.

  “When your relative velocities are measured in tens of thousands of miles per hour, your target-shooting is quite like knocking off ducks. So long as they chose they could simply alter course unpredictably and we could try and follow them from then until doomsday—and we wouldn’t either be able to hit them with a projectile or be able to board them.

  “For week we chased them all over the System—at least in the Jovian regions and filially they gave us the slip. When we sat down on the Titan port of Lennes, we turned into spies. Everybody had one assignment. Visit every Bar and hangout where there would be the slightest clue to finding out the base of the raider. Brother, that’s hard, because you can’t disguise patrolmen, at least not very well.

  “Eventually we didn’t locate the base at all. We got it instead from a Martian station. An agent had gotten into the raiding group somehow and we learned that the raider was based on an asteroid.

  “That was our chance. We shot out into the belt, hoped we hadn’t been radared or monitored. We landed on the lump, a small party went out and knocked out the radar and radio beacons, and we moved in.

  “That’s all there was to it—no glamorous space battles, no blasts of rays and projectiles, simply a lousy little ambush dependent for success on an informer. That’s a pretty far cry from what the writer boys once thought space action would be.”

  “Well,” I admitted, “you’ve made your point. There is no glamor or excitement in that kind of battle, but technology may provide you with an answer and the science-fiction writers with some vindication.”

  “How do you mean?” Baines asked.

  “When the lab boys invent ray beams and ray guns.” I grinned.

  Women Won’t Work

  Sam Dewey

  “DID YOU see Regulation K?” Jerry McBride asked Ken Walters.

  Ken shrugged his husky frame lower in the bar-seat and took another pull at his glass. “Don’t give me Company routine now, Jerry,” he said, “I’m enjoying myself. I haven’t been in Venusport for six weeks. When I get back into the Outlands, then’s time enough to groan about Company policy. I’m delivering eighty pounds a week of quality bio-gen. The Company’s happy, I’m happy—why worry?”

  “Last time I saw you, you wanted an assistant, didn’t you?” Jerry asked.

  “Sure. I’ve said that a dozen times, but so has every mucker. Look, Jerry, you’ve been in the Outlands; you know what it’s like. You’re working over a pod and there’ll be a ‘meebie’ behind you before you know it, or you
’ll park the crawler for some shut-eye and wake up with your skull bashed in by a ‘slimey’. All of us muckers have raised hell with the Company representatives but they tell us to forget it. They’re not paying passage from Terra for non-producers. The Company wants to make money.”

  “Believe me Ken, I sympathize with you boys all right.”

  “I’m sorry, Jerry,” Ken said. “I know you know our set-up. But go ahead, give me the dope on Regulation K.”

  A few hours later, Ken checked out of the Company offices. It was a two hundred mile run to his Outland sector and a crawler couldn’t make it in less than five or six hours even if a good portion of the trip was over water. He was feeling better too, not only because the “Prima” had been good, but also because of Regulation “K”. “In accordance with enlightened Company policy, it has at last been possible to supply assistants to garners—” the Company didn’t call its employees muckers—“and present arrangements were to supply them as seniority dictated. With two years of straight Outland work, Ken felt he stood a good chance of getting an assistant. He had one all light.

  He didn’t notice until he’d actually dropped behind the wheel of the crawler that he had company. He turned abruptly and found himself staring into the face of a girl. In the damp humid atmosphere, like all workers, she wore little more than Ken did—a breechclout and a gun—supplemented by a halter that did things for her figure. Over this she wore naturally a pliofilm cover and a respirator helmet, but the transparent plastic concealed none of her charms.