Endlich, having repaired his atomic battery, didn't draw power anymore from the unit that had supplied the ancient buildings. But the relics remained. From a device like a phonograph, there was even a bell-like voice that chanted when a lever was pressed.
And it was the kids who found the first "tay-tay bug," a day after its trills were heard from among the new foliage. "Ta-a-a-ay-y-y—ta-a-a-a-ay-y-yy-y—" The sound was like that of a little wheel, humming with the speed of rotation, and then slowing to a scratchy stop.
A one-legged hopper, with a thin but rigid gliding wing of horn.Opalescent in its colors. It had evidently hatched from a tiny egg, preserved by the cold for ages.
Wise enough not to clutch it with his bare hands, Bubs came running with it held in a leaf.
It proved harmless. It was ugly and beautiful. Its great charm was that it was a vocal echo from the far past.
Sure. Life got to be fairly okay, in spite of hard work. The Endlichs had conquered the awful stillness with life-sounds. Growing plants kept the air in their greenhouse fresh and breathable by photosynthesis. John Endlich did a lot of grinning and whistling. His temper never flared once. Deep down in him there was only a brooding certainty that the calm couldn't last. For, from all reports, trouble seethed at the mining camp. At any time there might be a blowup, a reign of terror that would roll over all of Vesta. A thing to release pent-up forces in men who had seen too many hard stars, and had heard too much stillness. They were like the stuff inside a complaining volcano.
The Endlichs had sought to time their various crops, so that they would all be ready for market on as nearly as possible the same day. It was intended as a trick of advertising—a dramatically sudden appearance of much fresh produce.
So, one moming, in a jet-equipped spacesuit, Endlich arced
out for the mining camp. Inside the suit he carried samples from his garden. Six tomatoes. Beauties.
"Have luck with them, Johnny! But watch out!" Rose flung after him by helmet phone. With a warm laugh. Just for a moment he felt maybe a little silly. Tomatoes! But they were what he was banking on, and had forced toward maturity, most. The way he figured, they were the kind of fruit that the guys in the camp—gagged by a diet of canned and dehydrated stuff, because they were too busy chasing mineral wealth to keep a decent hydroponic garden going—would be hungriest for.
Well—he was rather too right, in some ways, to be fortunate. Yeah—they still call what happened the Tomato War.
Poor Johnny Endlich. He was headed for the commissary dome to display his wares. But vague urges sidetracked him, and he went into the recreation dome of the camp, instead.
And into the bar.
The petty sin of two drinks hardly merits the punishing trouble which came his way as, at least partially, a result. With his face-window open, he stood at the bar with men whom he had never seen before. And he began to have minor delusions of grandeur. He became a little too proud of his accomplishments. His wariness slipped into abeyance. He had a queer idea that, as a farmer with concrete evidence of his skills to show, he would win respect that had been denied him. Dread of consequences of some things that he might do, became blurred. His hot temper began to smolder, under the spark of memory and the fury of insult and malicious tricks, that, considering the safety of his loved ones, he had had no way to fight back against. Frustration is a dangerous force. Released a little, it excited him more. And the tense mood of the camp—a thing in the very air of the domes—stirred him up more. The camp—ready to explode into sudden, open barbarism for days—was now at a point where nothing so dramatic as fresh tomatoes and farmers in a bar was needed to set the fireworks off.
John Endlich had his two drinks. Then, with calm and foolhardy detachment, he set the six tomatoes out in a row before him on the synthetic mahogany.
He didn't have to wait at all for results. Bloodshot eyes, some of them belonging to men who had been as gentle as lambs in their ordinary lives on Earth, turned swiftly alert. Bristly faces showed swift changes of expression: surprise, interest, greed for possession—but most of all, aggressive and Satanic humor.
"Jeez—tamadasl" somebody growled, amazed.
Under the circumstances, to be aware of opportunity was to act. Big paws, some bare and calloused, some in the gloves of space suits, reached out, grabbed. Teeth bit. Juice squirted, landing on hard metal shaped for the interplanetary regions.
So far, fine. John Endlich felt prouder of himself—he'd expected a certain fierceness and lack of manners. But knowing all he did know, he should have taken time to visualize the inevitable chain-reaction.
"Thanks, pal . . . You're a prince . . ."
Sure—but the thanks were more of a mockery than a formality. "Hey! None for me? Whatsa idea? . . ."
"Shuddup, Mic . . . Who's dis guy? . . . Say, Friend—you wouldn't be that pun'kin-head we been hearin' about, would you? . . . Well—my gracious—bet you are! Dis'll be nice to watchl . . ."
"Where's Alf Neely, Cranston? What we need is excitement."
"Seen him out by the slot-machines. The bar is still out of bounds for him. He can't come in here."
"Says who? Boss Man Mahoney? For dis much sport Neely can go straight to hell! And take Boss Man with him on a pitchfork . . . Hey-y-y! . . . Ne-e-e-e-l-y-y-y! . . ."
The big man whose name was called lumbered to the window at the entrance to the bar, and peered inside. During the last couple of months he'd been in a perpetual grouch over his deprivation of liberty, which had rankled him more as an affront to his dignity.
Neely let out a yell of sheer glee. His huge shoulders hunched, his pendulous nose wobbled, his squinty eyes gleamed and he charged into the bar.
John Endlich's first reaction was curiously similar to Neely's.
He felt a flash of savage triumph under the stimulus of the thought of immediate battle with the cause of most of his troubles. Temper blazed in him.
Belatedly, however, the awareness came into his mind that he had started an emotional avalanche that went far beyond the weight and fury of one man like Neely. Lord, wouldn't he ever learn? It was tough to crawl, but how could a man put his wife and kids in awful jeopardy at the hands of a flock of guys whom space had turned into gorillas?
Endlich tried for peace. It was to his credit that he did so quite coolly. He turned toward his charging adversary and grinned.
"Hi, Neely," he said. "Have a drink—on me."
The big man stopped short, almost in unbelief that anyone could stoop so low as to offer appeasement. Then he laughed uproariously.
"Why, I'd be delighted, Mr. Pun'kins," he said in a poisonous-sweet tone. "Let bygones be bygones. Hey, Charlie! Hear what Pun'kins says? The drinks are all on him!"
With a sudden lunge Neely gripped Endlich's hand, and gave it a savage if momentary twist that sent needles of pain shooting up the homesteader's arm. It was a goading invitation to battle, which grim knowledge of the sequel now compelled Endlich to pass up.
"Don't call him Pun'kins, Neely!" somebody yelled. "It ain't polite to mispronounce a name. It's Mr. Tomatoes. I just saw. Bet he's got a million of 'em, out there on the farm!"
The whole crowd in the bar broke into coarse shouts and laughs and comments. ". . . We ain't good neighbors—neglecting our social duties. Let's pay 'em a visit . . . Pun'kins! What else you got besides tamadas? Let's go on a picnic! . . . Hell with the Boss Man! . . . Yah-h-h—We need some diversion . . . I'm not goin' on shift. . . Come on, everybody! There's gonna be a fight— a moider! . . . Hell with the Boss Man . . ."
Like the flicker of flame flashing through dry gunpowder, you could feel the excitement spread. Out of the bar. Out of the recrióme. It would soon ignite the whole tense camp.
John Endlich's heart was in his mouth, as his mind pictured the part of all this that would affect him and his. A bunch of men gone wild, kicking over the traces, arcing around Vesta, sacking and destroying in sheer exuberance, like brats on Hallowe'en. They would stop at nothing. And Rose and t
he kids . . .
This was it. What he'd been so scared of all along. It was at least partly his own fault. And there was no way to stop it now.
T love tomatoes, Mr. Pun'kins," Neely rumbled at Endlich's side, reaching for the drink that had been set before him. "But first I'm gonna smear you all over the camp . . . Take my time-do a good job . . . Because y'didn't give me any tomatoes . . ."
Whereat, John Endlich took the only slender advantage at hand for him—surprise. With all the strength of his muscular body, backed up by dread and pent-up fury, he sent a gloved fist crashing straight into Neely's open face-window. Even the pang in his well-protected knuckles was a satisfaction—for he knew that the damage to Neely's ugly features must be many times greater.
The blow, occurring under the conditions of Vesta's tiny gravity, had an entirely un-Earthly effect. Neely, eyes glazing, floated gently up and away. And Endlich, since he had at the last instant clutched Neely's arm, was drawn along with the miner in a graceful, arcing flight through the smoky air of the bar. Both armored bodies, lacking nothing in inertia, tore through the tough plastic window, and they bounced lightly on the pavement of the main section of the rec-dome.
Neely was as limp as a wet rag, sleeping peacefully, blood all over his crushed face. But that he was out of action signified no peace, when so many of his buddies were nearby, and beginning to seethe, like a swarm of hornets.
So there was an element of despair in Endlich's quick actions as he slammed Neely's face-window and his own shut, picked up his enemy, and used his jets to propel him in the long leap to the airlock of the dome. He had no real plan. He just had the ragged and all but hopeless thought of using Neely as a hostage— as a weapon in the bitter and desperate attempt to defend his
wife and children from the mob that would be following close behind him . . .
Tumbling end over end with his light but bulky burden, he sprawled at the threshold of the airlock, where the guard, posted there, had stepped hastily out of his way. Again, capricious luck, surprise, and swift action were on his side. He pressed the control-button of the lock, and squirmed through its double valves before the startled guard could stop him.
Then he slammed his jets wide, and aimed for the horizon.
It was a wild journey—for, to fly straight in a frictionless vacuum, any missile must be very well balanced; and the inertia and the slight but unwieldy weight of Neely's bulk disturbed such balance in his own jet-equipped space suit. The journey was made, then, not in a smooth arc, but in a series of erratic waverings. But what Endlich lacked in precise direction, he made up in sheer reckless, dread-driven speed.
From the very start of that wild flight, he heard voices in his helmet phones:
"Damn pun'kin-head greenhornl Did you see how he hit Neely, Schmidt? Yeah—by surprise . . . Yeah—Kuzak. I saw. He hit without warning . . . yella yokel . . . Who's comin' along to get him? . .
Sure—there was another side to it—other voices:
"Shucks—Neely had it coming to him. I hope the farmer really murders that big lunkhead . . . You ain't kiddin', Muir. I was glad to see his face splatter like a rotten tamata . .
Okay—fine. It was good to know you had some sensible guys on your side. But what good was it, when the camp as a whole was boiling over from its internal troubles? There were more than enough roughnecks to do a mighty messy job—fast.
Panting with tension, Endlich swooped down before his greenhouse, and dragged Neely inside through the airlock. For a fleeting instant the sights and sounds and smells that impinged on his senses, as he opened his face-window once more, brought him a regret. The rustle of com, the odor of greenery, the chicken voices—there was home in all of this. Something pastoral and beautiful and orderly—gained with hard work. And something brought back—restored—from the remote past. The buzzing of the tay-tay bug was even a real echo from that smashed yet undoubtedly once beautiful world of antiquity.
But these were fragile concerns, beside the desperate question of the immediate safety of Rose and the kids . . . Already cries and shouts and comments were coming faintly through his helmet phones again:
"Get the yokel! Get the bum! . . . We'll fix his wagon good . . ."
The pack was on the way—getting closer with every heartbeat. Never in his life had Endlich experienced so harrowing a time as this; never, if by some miracle he lived, could he expect another equal to it.
To stand and fight, as he would have done if he were alone, would mean simply that he would be cut down. To try the peacemaking of appeasement, would have probably the same result-plus, for himself, the dishonor of contempt.
So, where was there to turn, with grim, unanswering blank-ness on every side?
John Endlich felt mightily an old yearning—that of a fundamentally peaceful man for a way to oppose and win against brutal, overpowering odds without using either serious violence or the even more futile course of supine submission. Here on Vesta, this had been the issue he had faced all along. In many ages and many nations—and probably on many planets throughout the universe—others had faced it before him.
To his straining and tortured mind the trite and somewhat mocking answers came: Psychology. Salesmanship. The selling of respect for one's self.
Ah, yes. These were fine words. Glib words. But the question, "How?" was more bitter and derisive than ever.
Still, he had to try something—to make at least a forlorn effort. And now, from certain beliefs that he had, coupled with some vague observations that he had made during the last hour, a tattered suggestion of what form that effort might take, came to him.
As for his personal defects that had given him trouble in the past—well—he was lugubriously sure that he had learned a final lesson about liquor. For him it always meant trouble. As for wanderlust, and the gambling and hell-raising urge—he had been willing to stay put on Vesta, named for the goddess of home, for weeks, now. And he was now about to make his last great gamble. If he lost, he wouldn't be alive to gamble again. If, by great good-fortune, he won—well he was certain that all the charm of unnecessary chance-taking would, by the memory of these awful moments, be forever poisoned in him.
Now Rose and the youngsters came hurrying toward him.
"Back so soon, Johnny?" Rose called. "What's this? What happened?"
"Who's the guy, Pop?" Evelyn asked. "Oh—Baloney Nose . . . What are you doing with him?"
But by then they all had guessed some of the tense mood, and its probable meaning.
"Neely's pals are coming, Honey," Endlich said quietly. "It's the showdown. Hide the kids. And yourself. Quick. Under the house, maybe."
Rose's pale eyes met his. They were comprehending, they were worried, but they were cool. He could see that she didn't want to leave him.
Evelyn looked as though she might begin to whimper; but her small jaw hardened.
Bubs' lower lip trembled. But he said valiantly: "I'll get the guns, Pop, I'm stayin' with yuh."
"No you're not, son," John Endlich answered. "Get going. Orders. Get the guns to keep with you—to watch out for Mom and Sis."
Rose took the kids away with her, without a word. Endlich wondered how to describe what was maybe her last look at him. There were no fancy words in his mind. Just Love. And deep concern.
Alf Neely was showing signs of returning consciousness. Which was good. Still dragging him, Endlich went and got a bushel basket. It was filled to the brim with ripe, red tomatoes, but he could carry its tiny weight on the palm of one hand, scarcely noticing that it was there.
For an instant Endlich scanned the sky, through the clear plastic roof of the great bubble. He saw at least a score of shapes in space armor, arcing nearer—specks in human form, glowing with reflected sunlight, like little hurtling moons among the stars. Neely's pals. In a moment they would arrive.
Endlich took Neely and the loaded basket close to the transparent side of the greenhouse, nearest the approaching roughnecks. There he removed Neely's oxygen helmet, hop
ing that, maybe, this might deter his friends a little from rupturing the plastic of the huge bubble and letting the air out. It was a feeble safeguard, for, in all probability, in case of such rupture, Neely would be rescued from death by smothering and cold and the boiling of his blood, simply by having his helmet slammed back on again.
Next, Endlich dumped the contents of the basket on the ground, inverted it, and sat Neely upon it. The big man had recovered consciousness enough to be merely groggy by now. Endlich slapped his battered face vigorously, to help clear his head—after having, of course, relieved him of the blaster at his belt.
Endlich left his own face-window open, so that the sounds of Neely's voice could penetrate to the mike of his own helmet phone, thus to be transmitted to the helmet phones of Neely's buddies.
Endlich was anything but calm inside, with the wild horde, as irresponsible in their present state of mind as a pack of idiot baboons, bearing down on him. But he forced his tone to be conversational when he spoke.
"Hello, Neely," he said. "You mentioned you liked tomatoes. Maybe you were kidding. Anyhow I brought you along home with me, so you could have some. Here on the ground, right in front of you, is a whole bushel. The regular asteroids price-considering the trouble it takes to grow 'em, and the amount of dough a guy like you can make for himself out here, is five bucks apiece. But for you, right now, they're all free. Here, have a nice fresh, ripe one, Neely."
The big man glared at his captor for a second, after he had looked dazedly around. He would have leaped to his feet—except that the muzzle of his own blaster was leveled at the center of his chest, at a range of not over twenty inches. For a fleeting instant, Neely looked scared and prudent. Then he saw his pals, landing like a flock of birds, just beyond the transparent side of the greenhouse. And he heard their shouts, coming loudly from Endlich's helmet-phones:
Andre Norton (ed) Page 26
