Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01]

by Edited By Martin Grrenburg

  He opened the hose valve slightly, not trusting the dial. A powerful jet of gas blew out to disperse in the emptiness of space. He closed it and carried the tank up to the hatch, where he set it down. He laid the flashlight beside it and drew his knife—

  Some three days later a group of mechanics eyed each other puzzledly as they followed Keith across the Mars—4 Spaceport. Frequently one or the other would pause to glance back at Keith’s ship and scratch his head. The original ground crew could be distinguished by the various tools they carried; but many others, pilots and off-duty ground men, had drifted over to swell the accumulating crowd.

  Keith, in a lighthearted mood not at all reminiscent of his despair three days before, led them to the canteen, where he ordered drinks all around. This invitation was received with polite but somewhat restrained thanks. Keith looked around.

  The semicircle of men, breathing deeply and quickly in the thin air of Mars, seemed like a pack of panting, expectant wolves.

  “Well?” demanded a burly mechanic when the silence was beginning to become oppressive. He laid the oxy-acetylene torch he bore down on a table.

  “Well, what?” parried Keith.

  The burly one pulled out a chair very deliberately and sat down with an air of being above childish play. Another of the ground crew amplified the question.

  “Look, Keith,” he pleaded, “you left here six days ago— only six days—and in a ship that was in perfect order. I went over her myself. You couldn’t have gone anywhere in that time. There’s no place that near, except the moons and they’re private property.”

  “You come back,” a third took up the plaint, “with your ship closed so tight we have to cut our way in to get you out. Both ports, the ‘chute hatch, and even a little bit around the portholes—all banged up and dented in. From the outside! If you couldn’t even get out, what happened?”

  “Oh, that,” began Keith.

  “Come on, come on,” demanded the chorus. “Give!”

  Keith “gave.”

  He told about the meteor, how he had jammed the port in his haste, and of his subsequent fruitless attempts to penetrate the rocket’s stubborn defenses against space. When he arrived at the point where he had carried the tank of hydrogen up to the parachute hatch, the silence in the place was as that of the tomb. Even the fat proprietor had forgotten his work and joined the audience.

  “And then?” demanded the burly mechanic, as Keith paused.

  “And then—well, this may seem screwy; in fact, if I hadn’t been partly off my nut at the time, I probably would never have thought of it,” said Keith. “I sucked in as much oxygen as I could and disconnected the oxygen tank. I switched the flashlight on and very gently cracked the bulb. It stayed lit just the same, since space is as good a vacuum as was in the bulb in the first place. When I got the glass off, I laid the flashlight on that spot on the ‘chute hatch—you saw that spot?”

  “You bet,” nodded the husky.

  “Rather hard to miss, what?” drawled one of the pilots.

  “Well, on that spot. Then I opened the valves on both tanks and played the gases out of the hoses over the same place. An object at bright-red heat, or around 900 degrees centrigrade, will ignite a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. The filament of an electric bulb when lit goes well over 2000. So the flashlight bulb ignited them and I had a fairly decent oxy-hydrogen torch.”

  “Ah!” The sigh rustled through the room. “Then that’s what made the spot with the hole.”

  “That was it. I had an oxygen drunk on, and I didn’t hold it quite steady. You know, an oxy-hydrogen flame is plenty hot —it’ll reach 2500 in an inclosed space, although mine wasn’t inclosed—but it doesn’t give much light. I wasn’t always sure just where it was hitting. Then, later, just before I had cut all the way through, I was beginning to want air pretty badly. That’s why I messed the whole place up.”

  “But you cut through,” remarked someone. “That was what counted.”

  “I suppose so. I lasted just long enough to make it. I burned the hole through the flap of the hatch. Then I had to yank the thing up. I reconnected the oxygen tank to my helmet, but there wasn’t much in it. It helped, though, until I got a one-handed grip in the hole I had cut, and pulled the flap open.”

  “Those things aren’t easy,” said a mechanic. “They have them set to open just so fast and no faster.”

  “Well I know. It seemed like hours to me,” laughed Keith. “I put all I had into it; I knew if I didn’t get through then, I was cooked. It finally came open. I shoved back the sliding hatch, clawed at the parachute—you should have seen me trying to repack it later!—and after about ten miles of it, I found I could get down. My head was spinning by that time. I unscrewed the manhole at the bottom with my last breath and fell through.”

  “Lucky you didn’t pass out,” said a tall pilot. “You could have suffocated right there in your own ship, with your helmet shut and the air blowing out into space.”

  Keith shivered.

  “You’re right. Fortunately, I got my helmet open just before things went completely dark. My lungs were retching for air by then. You know how you—”

  “Yeah, I know,” nodded the pilot quietly. He did. There had been a time—

  “Well, that’s about all,” said Keith. “I closed the manhole while I got hold of myself and broke out fresh tanks of oxygen. Then I packed the ‘chute in on top of me as best I could, and swung back toward Mars. I figured I’d better have the can put back into shape before I went any farther.”

  “Man, were you lucky!” was the consensus.

  “Was I!” agreed Keith. “At least I’m glad you can’t get locked out from Mars.”

  “Speaking of space cans,” spoke the burly mechanic, picking up his oxy-acetylene torch from the table, “here—you better carry a can opener from now on.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Lewis Padgett

  THE IRON STANDARD

  Alien races didn’t have to be either friendly or unfriendly; they could be stubbornly indifferent—with serious effect.

  ~ * ~

  S

  o 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 decockroaching 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. “Yea
h. Where’s Bronson?”

  “Panhandling. But he won’t get a fal.” The Navaho nodded towards 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 tarkoinars 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 tarkoinars 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 towards 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.