Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  The days that followed were hazy; they kept him drugged because his energetic nature would have prevented rapid healing. It was four days after the operation that they gave him a quick shot of counter-drug that brought him out of the fog immediately.

  There were people there.

  Don Channing, Walt Franks, Wes Farrell, and Dr. Hansen.

  “Hello,” he said, looking up with a wry smile. “How many car washings do I owe you?”

  “Plenty, brother. I tinkered for three hours over that frame of yours. Why did they have to run through an engineering change when they got to hanging your appendix in? I had to dig for it.”

  “That’s the trouble with this system,” Keg mumbled to Don. “He’ll get the same credit for tinkering with me as he would for removing the cat’s appendix.”

  “Well, you’re worth the same as any cat,” grinned Walt.

  “Thanks,” grunted Keg. “Don’t tell me that you guys were worried?”

  “Nope. We came to give you a hunk of something interesting. Wes Farrell hauled it out of space, electrons, and considerable high-powered theory. Identium. Corrosion-proof, inert, malleable, but hard enough for coins, and you can roll it out into ten-thousandths sheets and use it for paper money. But don’t ever put it into a duplicator. It’ll blow the top right off of your roof if you do. There’s our medium of exchange, Keg.”

  “Now,” breathed Keg, “we can all get back to normal. Thanks, fellows.”

  “The government is making the stuff in reams,” said Don. “It won’t be too long before you’ll be able to pay Hansen what he’s really worth, as well as the rest of your crew. But in spite of this trinket, Life has still made a big change. I can foresee the four-hour week right now.”

  “It’s here and been here for some time,” said Keg. “But—Hey! Linna!”

  Keg’s wife entered. She was clad in hospital whites and was carrying a tray.

  “Hello, Keg,” she said solemnly. Keg hadn’t heard that tone of voice for years.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Someone had to help. I was doing nothing, and so I pitched in to help Dr. Hansen when he worked on you. He said I did fine.”

  “Linna is a good nurse’s aid,” responded Hansen. “Mind if we keep her on a bit?”

  “Not if she minds staying.”

  “I want to, Keg,” she said quietly. “With Marie wearing a platinum-mounted diamond tiara to dust the house, and Briggs coming to work in a limousine—imagine the idea of a butler’s chauffeur!—and, as you said, people eating from gold plates and using indium tableware, there’s nothing to get long-nosed about but one’s inventiveness, talent, or uniqueness.”

  “Linna, you’re an ace,” grinned Keg. He smiled up at her and said, while waving the sheet of identium before their faces, “Do me a job, Linna, Go out and buy me back the spaceline.”

  “Huh?” blurted Channing, Franks, and Hansen. “What for?”

  “When the tumult and the shouting dies, fellers, we’ll all be back in business again. Identium! The only thing you can write a contract on and not have it fouled or duplicated. The only thing you can write a check on, or use for credit. Identium—the first page of the new era. And when we get the mess cleared up Keg Johnson and Company will be carrying the mail! Linna, go out and buy me back my spaceline!”

  -

  Interlude

  An era of absolutely no want may give rise to concern about the ambitions of the race. Those who may wonder why the Period of Duplication did not weed all ambition out and leave the race decadent are missing one vital point. They should ask themselves to consider the many reasons why men work.

  Keg Johnson himself can supply one line of reasoning—as follows:

  Why do men work? Men often work because they must work in order to live. Then why do many men work hard, at long hours, when there are easier ways of getting along? Because they have the desire to provide the best they can for their families. It is necessary to them to feel proud of the fact that they can do as well as they do. But remove the sheer necessity of toiling for food, clothing, and shelter, and you make all men equally capable of supporting a family. Then come the ambitious ones who would appear a little better, a little more desirable, a little cleverer than their fellow man. This is not odious; it is the essence of ambition, even though it sounds egotistic when mentioned in cold print.

  And so when people all are well clad, well housed, and well fed, there arises an almost universal ambition to become clever; to produce things that have not been duplicated by the machine. For, in a culture in which fifty thousand copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper hang in theaters, churches, schools, and living rooms, he who possesses a handmade chroma painted by his hand owns a true Unique, to which he can point with pride.

  So once the flurry was over and the tumult gone, men took a deep breath—

  And went back to work.

  On Venus Equilateral they worked, too. Given more time for leisure, they took more time for study and experiment.

  Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with something that would put Venus Equilateral on the obsolete list. Venus Equilateral had been instrumental in putting a number of other things on the retired list and the relay station itself was long overdue.

  And, too, there was still one man who would give his black soul to see Venus Equilateral lose out …

  -

  Mad Holiday

  “Yeah,” Wes Farrell drawled, “but what makes it vibrate?”

  Don Channing looked down at the crystal. “Where did you get it?” he asked.

  Walt Franks chuckled. “I bet you‘ve been making synthetic elements again with the heterodyned duplicator.”

  Farrell nodded. “I’ve found a new series sort of like the iron-nickel-cobalt group.”

  Channing shook his head. There was a huge permanent magnet that poured a couple of million gauss across its gap, and in this magnetic field Farrell had the crystal supported. A bank of storage batteries drove several hundred amperes—by the meter—through the crystal from face to face on another axis, and down from above poured an intense monochromatic light.

  “Trouble is,” complained Wes, “that there isn’t a trace of a ripple in any of the three factors that work on the thing. Permanent magnet, battery current, and continuous gas-arc discharge. Yet—”

  “It vibrates,” nodded Channing. “Faintly, but definitely it is vibrating.”

  Walt Franks disappeared for a moment. He returned with a portable phonograph, which caused Don Channing to grin and ask, “Walt, are you going to make a recording of this conversation, or do you think it will dance to a Strauss waltz?”

  “It’s slightly bats, so I brought the overture to Die Fledermaus for it,” snorted Franks.

  As he spoke, he removed the pickup from the instrument and added a length of shielded wire. Then he set the stylus of the phonograph against the faintly vibrating crystal and turned up the gain.

  At once a whining hum came from the loudspeaker.

  “Loud, isn’t it?” he grinned, “Can you identify that any better?”

  Wes Farrell threw up his hands. “I can state with positiveness that there isn’t any varying field of anything that I know of that is at that frequency.”

  Channing just grinned. “Maybe it’s just normal for that thing to vibrate.”

  “Like an aspen leaf?” Walt asked.

  Channing nodded. “Or like my wife’s Jell-O.”

  Walt turned the dial of an audio generator until the note was beating at zero with the vibrating crystal. “What frequency does Arden’s Jell-O work at?” he asked. “I’ve got about four-fifty per second.”

  “Arden’s Jell-O isn’t quite that nervous,” said Don, puzzling.

  “Taking my name in vain?” asked a cool and cheerful contralto.

  Don whirled and demanded, “How long have you been keyhole-listening?”

  Arden smiled. “When Walt Franks nearly runs me down without seeing me—and
in his great clutching hands is a portable phonograph but no records—and in his eye there is that wild Captain Lightning glint—I find my curiosity aroused to the point of visible eruption. Interesting, fellers?”

  “Baffling,” admitted Channing. “But what were you doing standing on odd corners waiting for Walt to run you down for?”

  “My feminine intuition told me that eventually one of you would do something that will wreck the station. When that happens, my sweet, I want to be among the focus of trouble so that I can say I told you so.”

  Walt grunted. “Sort of a nice epitaph,” he said.

  “We’ll have them words ‘I tole ya so’ engraved on the largest fragment of Venus Equilateral when we do.”

  Don grinned. “Walt, don’t you like women?”

  Franks swelled visibly and pompously. “Why, of course,” he said with emphasis. “Some of my best friends are women!”

  Arden stuck her tongue out at him. “I like you, too,” she said. “But you wait—I’ll fix you!”

  “How?” Walt asked idly.

  “Oh, go freeze,” she told him.

  “Freeze?” chuckled Walt. “Now, that’s an idea.”

  “Idea?” asked Don, seeing the look on Walt’s face. “What kind of idea?”

  Walt thought seriously for a moment. “The drinks are on me,” he said. “And I’ll explain when we get there. Game? This is good.”

  -

  Insistent, Walt led them from Wes Farrell’s laboratory near the south end skin of Venus Equilateral to Joe’s, which was up nine levels and in the central portion of the station.

  “Y’know,” Walt said, “women aren’t so bad after all. But I’ve got this feminine intuition business all figured out. Since women are illogical in the first place, they are inclined to think illogical things and to say what they think. Then if it should happen to make sense, they apply it. I used to know an experimenter who tried everything he could think of on the theory that someday he’d hit upon something valuable. Well—this is it, good people.”

  Walter shoved the door open and Wes Farrell grinned as he always did at the sign that read:

  -

  JOE’S

  The Best Bar

  in

  Twenty-Seven Million Miles

  (Minimum)

  -

  Arden entered and found a place at the long bar. The three men lined up on either side of her and Joe automatically reached for the Scotch and glasses.

  “Now,” said Channing, “What is it?”

  Walt lifted his glass. “I drink to the Gods of Coincidence,” he chanted, “and the Laws of Improbability. It was here that I learned that which makes me master of the situation now.”

  Arden clinked her glass against his. “Walt, I’ll drink to the Gods of Propinquity. Just how many problems have you solved in your life by looking through the bottom of a glass—darkly?”

  “Ah! Many,” he said, taking a sip of the drink.

  He swallowed.

  A strange look came over his face. He sputtered. He grew a bit ruddy of face, made a strangling noise, and then choked.

  “Mi gawd, Joe! What have you mixed this with, shoe polish?”

  “Just made it this afternoon,” replied Joe.

  “Then throw it back in the matter bank and do it again,” said Walt.

  Don took a very cautious sip and made a painfully wry face. “The SPCS—Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Scotch—should dip then: tongue in this,” he said.

  Joe shrugged. “Ifs from your own pet brand,” he told Channing.

  Arden smelled gingerly. “Don,” she asked him seriously, “have you been petting dragons?”

  Wes, chemist-like, dipped his forefinger in the drink, diluted it in a glass of water, and touched it to his tongue. “It’ll never be popular,” he said.

  Joe turned back to his duplicator and shoved a recording into the slot. The machine whirred for a few seconds, and Joe opened the door and took out the new bottle, which he handed to Walt. Walt cut the seal and pulled the cork, and poured. He tasted gingerly and made the same wry face.

  “What in the name of hell could have happened?” he asked.

  “It’s the same recording,” asserted Joe.

  “But what happened to it?”

  “Well,” admitted Joe, “it was dropped this morning.”

  “In what?” Walt demanded,

  “Just on the floor.”

  Wes Farrell nodded. “Probably rearranged some of the molecular patterns in the recording,” he said.

  Joe put both bottles in the duplicator and turned the switch. They disappeared in seconds, and then Joe took another recording and made a bottle of a different brand.

  Again Walt tasted gingerly, smiled hugely, and took a full swallow. “Whew,” he said. “That was almost enough to make a man give up liquor entirely.”

  “And now,” said Don Channing. “Let us in on your big secret—or was this just a ruse to get us in this gilded bistro?”

  Walt nodded. He led them to the back of the bar and into the back room. “Refrigerator,” he said.

  Arden took his arm with affected sympathy. “I know it’s big enough, but—”

  Walt swung the huge door open and stepped in.

  “I didn’t really mean—” continued Arden, but her voice died off, trailing away into silence as Walt, motioning them to come in, also put his finger on his lips.

  “Are you going to beef?” demanded Channing.

  “No, you big ham,” snorted Walt. “Just listen!”

  Wes blinked and slammed the door shut behind them.

  And then in the deep silence caused when the heavy door shut off the incident sounds from Joe’s restaurant and bar, there came a faint, high-pitched hum.

  Don turned to Arden. “That it?” he asked. “You’ve got better pitch sense than I have.”

  “Sounds like it,” Arden admitted.

  “Cold in here,” said Wes. He swung open the door and they returned to the bar for their drink. “We can establish its identity easily enough,” he told them. He finished the drink, and turned from the bar. “Walt, you bring the pickup and amplifier; Don, you carry the audio generator; and I’ll bring up the rear with the rest of the gadget.”

  They left, and Joe threw his hands out in a gesture of complete helplessness.

  “Trouble?” Arden asked cheerfully.

  “I didn’t mind when they used the tablecloths to draw on,” he said. “I didn’t really object when they took the tablecloths and made Warren use ‘em as engineering sketches to make things from. But now, dammit, it looks like they’re going to move into my refrigerator, and for God knows what! I give up!”

  “Joe,” said Arden sympathetically, “have one on me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” chuckled Joe laconically. “If I’m to be shoved out of mine own bailiwick, I might as well enjoy these last few days.”

  He was finishing the drink as the technical section of Venus Equilateral returned, laden with equipment.

  Arden shrugged. “Here we go again,” she said. “Once more I am a gadget widow. What do you recommend, Joe? Knitting—or shall I become a dipsomaniac?”

  Joe grinned. “Why not present Don with a son and heir?”

  Arden finished her glass in one draught, and a horrified expression came over her face. “One like Don is all I can stand,” she said in a scared voice. Then she smiled. “It’s the glimmering of an idea, though,” she added with brightening face. “It stands a fifty-fifty chance that it might turn out to be a girl—which would scare Don to death, having to live with two like me.”

  “Twins,” suggested Joe.

  “You stay the hell out of this,” said Arden good-naturedly.

  Walt Franks reappeared, headed out of the restaurant, and returned a few minutes later with another small case full of measuring equipment.

  “And this,” said Arden as Walt vanished into the refrigerator once again, “will be known as the first time Walt Franks ever spent so mu
ch time in here without a drink!”

  “Time,” said Joe, “will tell.”

  -

  Halfway between Lincoln Head and Canalopsis, Barney Carroll was examining a calendar. “Christmas,” he said absently.

  Christine Baler stretched slender arms. “Yeah,” she drawled, “and on Mars.”

  Her brother Jim smiled. “Rather be elsewhere?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “On Terra, where Christmas originated? Where Christmas trees adorn every home, and the street corners are loaded with Santa Clauses? Where—?”

  “Christmas is a time for joy,” said Christine. “Also, to the average party Christmas means snow, wassail, and friends dropping in. Me, I’m acclimated—almost—to this chilly Martian climate. Cold weather has no charm for your little sister, James.”

  “Oh,” said Barney.

  “Oh,” Jim echoed, winking at his sidekick.

  “Don’t you ‘Oh’ me,” snorted Christine.

  “Oh?” Barney repeated. “Okay, woman, we get it. Instead of the cold and the storm, you’d prefer a nice warm climate like Venus?”

  “It might be fun,” she said evasively.

  “Or even better,” said Jim Baler to Barney Carroll, “we might visit Venus Equilateral.”

  Christine’s evasive manner died. “Now,” she said, “you’ve come up with a bright idea!”

  Barney chuckled. “Jim,” he said, “call Walt Franks and ask him if he has a girl for us?”

  “He has quite a stock in his little black book,” remarked Jim.

  “We’ll drop in quietly, surprise-like,” announced Christine. “And if there’s any little black book, I’ll see that you two Martian wolves divide ‘em evenly.”

  “Walt is going to hate us for this,” Jim chuckled. “Accessories to the fact of his lost bachelorhood. Okay, Chris, pack and we’ll—”

  “Pack, nothing,” laughed Christine. “I‘ve packed. For all three of us. All we need is our furs until we get to Canalopsis. Then,” she added happily, “we can dress in light clothing. I’m beginning to hate cold weather.”

  “How about passage?” asked Barney. “Or did you—”

  Christine nodded. “The Martian Girl leaves Canalopsis in about three hours. We pause at Mojave, Terra, for six hours; and thence to Venus Equilateral on the special trio that takes Christmas stuff out there.”