by Various
"What is this bromine, anyhow? Boy it sure stinks!"
"It's a chemical element like chlorine, only it's a liquid. It fumes if you don't keep it covered with water, and the fumes really get you. They used it in gas bombs in the war."
"That was chlorine."
"They used bromine, too. I read it."
"Air!" Neff rasped.
"Help yourself if you call this stinkin' stuff in your warehouse air."
From the vault the deadened voice came. "This must be the switch. The other switch is for the lights."
"Look out! When you turn it on don't get dosed yourself."
"I only dumped a few drops in. There. It'll blow out in a few--phew, let me outta here. That stuff does--God, it's worse than the dose I got in the chem lab!" The voice grew, coughing and cursing. "Better wait a minute or two. How's our big brave dog-killer doing?"
On his hands and knees, Neff was on the verge of passing out, but doggedly he tried to place the voices. Highschool kids? Bromine. Sounded like a chemical they might filch from the highschool laboratory.
A kick in the ribs reminded him he was still helpless. "All right, get back in there." They aimed him through the vault door and kept kicking him until he went. They hauled him up into his chair. He tried to strike out blindly, but his chest was full of licking flames that spread pain out to his shoulders.
Now rope whipped around his feet, hands, chest and neck, jerking his body hard against the castered desk-chair and cramping his head back. "Tie him good. No way to lock him in with this door."
Neff opened his eyes. The boys were wet blurs rummaging through his desk. "Look! Just look at that! We can't carry all that."
"Get one of those burlap sacks out there. By the door."
Footsteps went and returned. "Now, just the small bills. Up to twenty. No, Jerry, leave the big stuff alone. Who'd take one from a kid?"
"Okay, let's make tracks."
"Wait!" Neff said desperately. "My legs and hands. You've cut off the circulation!"
* * * * *
Something hard like the barrel of a gun rapped down on the top of his head. "I ought to blow your dirty brains out. Killing my little sister's dog, damn you. Damn you, I think I will kill you. Damn you, damn you!" the voice crested.
"Wait a minute Jerry," the other voice cut in. "I got a better idea. Here. Look at this."
Short silence. "Yeah! Yeah, that's just dandy. Look how thin he is. That's just what the doctor ordered. Okay, the top's loose. Stand by the door and don't let him get by you. Wait. Got your flash? Good! In the dark. That's real good. Which switch is it?"
"Throw them both."
"Okay. Flash it over here. Look out, here I come!"
"Hurry up! Look at that hungry, black-eyed little devil. That ought to fix up the son-of-a--" ...Thunk! The compression rammed heavily into Neff's ears. The bolts shot solidly into place from the outside, and the combination knob rang faintly as it was spun. Silence.
They'd go out the same way they came in and tack the board back in place. How long before anybody would miss him? Twenty-four hours? Hell, no. Nobody would bust a gut worrying that soon. Two days? Some weeks he was gone several days making the rounds of his loan offices.
A week? Maybe. Girls at the Palace would get suspicious. Tell Collin Burns.
But a week! They'd cut off the blower when they threw both switches. No ventilation. No air.
Neff strained at the ropes. His legs were pulled under the seat so tightly that his feet were turning numb. Hands were tingling, too. Dirty little sadists. Turning John loose thinking--
He had to get loose. Less than one day's air, then--
"John!" Thank God John wasn't an ordinary rat.
"John, come over to me. These ropes. Chew them, John. Come on, John. Come on, boy."
No sound at first, then a faint motion in the old newspapers.
"John, say the alphabet!"
"Eh--bih----"
"That's right. Go on!"
"Fih----jih----" The squeaking stopped.
"Come over to me, John. Come to me, boy."
He held his breath. The beating of his heart was so loud he couldn't be sure that John was moving. The silence was long. Even the rat was blind in this blackness. He must be patient.
Sweat began oozing and trickling down his face, his armpits, his back--even his left leg. No, wait! That wasn't sweat!
* * * * *
The throbbing in his legs was greatest at his left knee. The trickle was blood from the gash. It ran freely, now, the ropes backing up arterial pressure. Never mind that!
"John!"
The coffee can tipped over, and the racket made Neff start against his bonds. The rope sawed his Adam's apple.
Crunch!
"Leave that damned wheat alone, John. Come over to me, boy. I'll give you a whole bag full when you chew off these ropes. Hear that, John? And a chicken foot. I'll bring you a whole chicken. A live one. I'll tie her down so she won't peck you. That's what I'll do, John."
He was breathing heavily now. "Do you get me, John? Would you like a live chicken?"
"Yeff."
The crunching resumed for a minute then stopped. Neff remembered, there had been only a dozen or so grains of wheat left. John would still be hungry. The thought of a chicken should do it. If not, he could threaten him.
Neff waited. Relax! There was all night to work this out.
Finally, he felt something at his ankles. "That's the boy, John. Up here and down my arms. They're behind me. Get the rope off my hands first. Come on boy."
It was John, all right. Neff could feel the little claws coming up his left leg.
"Come on, hurry up, John. Tell you what. I'll bring you a nice, fat female, just like yourself. A live one. You can live in the cage togeth----John, don't stop there!"
The claws had paused near his knee and were clinging to the blood-soaked cloth.
"No, no, John! Don't! I'll stick you with the fork. I'll stick you--I'll kill you! John, we got to get out of here or we'll both die. Die, do you hear! We'll suffocate! Don't do that. Stop. Stop or I'll--"
Neff's threats beat hard into the rat's brain, and now as the slanting incisors tore at the cloth and chewed the luscious, blood-smothered, hot meat, Neff's screams sent tremors through the skinny, voracious body, and the tail tucked down. The words made John nervous, but it was dark. And there was food, such wonderful food, so much food!
They were harsh words, terrible, screaming words: but words are words and food is food, and after all--
John was only a rat.
THE END
* * *
Contents
EARTHSMITH
By Stephen Marlowe
Nobody at the Interstellar Space School had ever heard of Earth so naturally they treated Smith with contempt--or was it an innate fear?...
Someone in the crowd tittered when the big ungainly creature reached the head of the line.
"Name?"
The creature swayed back and forth foolishly, supporting the bulk of his weight first on one extremity and then on the other. His face which had a slight rosy tint anyway got redder.
"Come, come. Planet? Name?" The registrar was only a machine, but the registrar could assume an air of feminine petulance. "We want to keep the line moving, so if you will please--"
The creature drew a deep breath and let the two words come out in a rush. "Earth, Smith," he said. Being nervous, he could not modulate his voice. Unable to modulate his voice, he heard the words come out too deep, too loud.
"Did you hear that voice?" demanded the man who had tittered. "On a cold wet night they say the karami of Caulo boom like that. And look at Earthsmith. Just look at him. I ask you, what can they accept at the school and still call it a school? Hey you, Earthsmith, what courses will you take?"
"I don't know," the creature confessed. "That's what I'm here for. I don't even know what they teach at the school."
"He doesn't know." More tittering.
The re
gistrar took all this in impassively, said: "What planet, Earthsmith?"
The creature was still uncomfortable. "Earth. Only my name is not Earthsmith. Smith--"
The titterer broke into a loud guffaw. "Earthsmith doesn't even know what planet he's from. Good old Earthsmith." He was a small thin man, this titterer, with too-bright eyes, vaguely purple skin, and a well-greased shock of stiff green hair.
Smith squared his wide shoulders and looked into the colored lights of the registrar. "It's a mistake. My name is Smith."
"What planet, Smith?"
"Earth. The planet Earth." Smith had a rosy, glistening bald head and a hairless face. A little bead of sweat rolled into his left eye and made him blink. He rubbed his eye.
"Age?" The machine had a way of asking questions suddenly, and Smith just stared.
"Tell me your age. Age. How old are you?"
Smith wanted to sit down, only there were no chairs. Just the room with its long line of people behind him, and the machine up front. The registrar.
"I'm twenty-seven."
"Twenty-seven what?"
"You asked me my age. I'm twenty-seven years old, and three months."
Except for the clicking of the machine, there was a silence. The voice of the machine, feminine again, seemed confused when it spoke. "I cannot correlate years, Smith of Earth. How old are you?"
It wasn't an ordeal, really, but Smith felt more uncomfortable every moment. Was the machine making fun of him? If it were, then it had an ally in the crowd, because the man who had tittered was laughing again, the green shock of hair on his head bobbing up and down.
"Earthsmith doesn't even know how old he is. Imagine."
The machine, which was more feminine than not, asked Smith how far the planet Earth was from its primary, and what the orbital speed of the planet was. Smith told her, but again the terminology was not capable of correlation.
"Unclassified as to age, Smith. It's not important. I wonder, are you dominant or receptive?"
"I'm a man. Male. Dom--"
"That doesn't matter. Smith, tell me, how long has it been since anyone from the planet Earth has attended the school?"
Smith said he didn't know, but, to his knowledge, no one from Earth had ever been here. "We don't get around much any more. It's not that we can't. We just go and then we don't like it, so we come back to Earth."
"Well, from the looks of you I would say you are a receptive. Very definitely receptive, Smith." Given sufficient data, the registrar could not be wrong. Given sufficient data the registrar could tell you anything you wanted to know, provided the answer could be arrived at from the data itself. "The male and female distinction no longer holds, of course. On some planets the female is dominant, on some she's not. It's generally according to the time of colonization, Smith. When was Earth colonized?"
"It wasn't."
"What do you mean, it wasn't?"
"We were always there. We colonized the rest of the galaxy. Long ago."
The registrar clicked furiously, expressed itself still more femininely this time. "Oh, that planet! You certainly are the first, Smith. The very first here at the school. Room 4027, dominant companion." Neuter voice again. "That's all, Smith of Earth. Next."
The vaguely purple-skinned man stood before the registrar, winked at the flashing lights. "You know, now I can see what they mean when we're told of a missing link in the chain between man and animal. Old Earthsmith...."
"Name?" said the machine.
The man pointed at Smith, shook with silent laughter. The back of Smith's head, which could not properly be called bald because he had never had any hair on it, was very red.
"Name's Jorak."
"Planet?" demanded the fully neuter machine.
* * * * *
There was the red star, a monstrous blotch of crimson swollen and brooding on the horizon and filling a quarter of the sky. There was the fleck of white high up near the top of the red giant, its white-dwarf companion in transit. These were the high jagged crags, falling off suddenly to the sundered, frothy sea with its blood-red sun-track fading to pink and finally to gray far away on either side.
Smith watched the waves break far below him, and he almost stumbled when someone tapped his shoulder.
"That was mean of the man named Jorak." She might have been a woman of Earth, except that she was too thin, cast in a too-delicate mould. Yet beautiful.
Smith shrugged, felt the heat rise to his face and knew that he must have looked like a mirror for the red sun.
"Is that really a blush, Smith? Are you blushing?"
He nodded. "I can't help it. I--"
"Don't be foolish. I don't want you to stop. I think it looks nice."
Smith rubbed his pate, watched the hot wind blow the girl's yellow hair about her face. "They tell me my great great grandfather had a little fringe of hair around his head. I've seen pictures."
"How nice--"
"If you're trying to make fun of me, please go away. It wasn't nice, it was ugly. Either you have hair or you don't. The men of Earth used to have it, long ago. The women still do."
She changed the subject. "I'll bet you think this place is ugly, Smith."
Smith shook his head. "No, it's stark. If you like things that way, it isn't really ugly. But Earth is a planet of green rolling hills and soft rains and--you're making fun of me."
"You say that again and I'll take it as an insult." She smiled. "We have our green rolling hills on Bortinot, only it's cold. I like it here because it's warm. And, of course, I have a lot to learn at school."
"Would you think I'm stupid if I ask you what?"
"No. And you were really serious in there when you said you didn't know what they teach."
"How could I know? I'm the first student here from Earth. Every five years--say, twenty times during the course of one lifetime--we get the application. This time the government finally decided someone should go. Me."
"Well, they teach just about everything that could be of value in a transtellar culture."
"What?"
"Things like astrogation and ethics--"
"I caught the school express at a Denebian planet. Someone told me there that the school is decadent."
She smiled up at him. "Deneb is a slothful place, then. It is true that the school never stands still, changing its courses to meet the demands of a changing society. If Deneb cannot keep pace with the changes, that could explain the feeling. Right now they'll be concentrating in dreams and dream-empathy, in some of the newer Garlonian dances, Sarchian cooking for the receptives and Wortan fighting for the dominants. Quite a virile program, Smith, provided one is up to it."
"What happened to your astrogation and ethics?"
"That? Oh, that's just a catch-all phrase. Your courses will depend on such things as your D or R classifications--"
"It makes me laugh a little," Smith admitted. "But they've classified me as a receptive. I guess they know what they're doing. Still--"
"You think you're strong, eh?"
"Well, I didn't see anyone in the registrar's room who would worry me very much in a fight."
"Society is sophisticated, Smith. There's more to strength than mere brawn. What sort of psi-powers have they cultivated on the planet Earth?"
* * * * *
In a general sense, but in a general sense only, Smith knew what she meant. "Well, there's hypnotism, and some people play at telepathy and clairvoyance. Nothing much, really."
"That isn't much, my friend."
"Why? What else is there?" Smith smiled for the first time. "I didn't know--" He shook his head, suddenly, to clear it. He felt tilted. He looked and he saw that everything was straight, but still he felt tilted. He tried to right himself, and down he went. On his stomach he lay, his legs twisted under him a little. Foolishly, he tried to get up. He couldn't.
"There's that." The girl laughed. "Suggestion without the need for hypnotism."
Smith stood up, said, "I see what you mean."
> "Think so?"
It began to rain. A brisk wind came up abruptly, and off in the distance Smith heard the roar of thunder. It came closer. Still closer. Like in a straight line. Smith watched the lightnings prance.
"We'd better get back to the school!" he cried. He didn't think she could hear his voice above the thunder. He started to shout again, but lightning crackled before his eyes. Between him and the girl. Something rumbled, and Smith started to fall. They had been blasted off the crag, and now they hurtled down through the sheets of hot rain....
"Feel yourself," the girl told him. The huge crimson sun still sat on the horizon. The air was hot and warm and Smith was dry.
"Suggestion," she smiled again. "Most of us have it to some degree, but we of Bortinot have it still more. Still think you should be a dominant?"
"Well--" The girl's face swam before his eyes. Lovely. Smith took a step forward, reached out and placed his big hands on her shoulders.
"Well what?" She was smiling.
"What's your name?"
"Geria."
His lips were big and hers were little, if full. He quivered as he kissed her. "I love you, Geria."
"I know it," she said.
* * * * *
"The reason I went outside to watch the sea," Smith said, "was because I didn't know how to get to room 4027. I didn't want to ask anyone, not after--"
"That makes sense. I'll take you, Smith. I'm just down the hall from you, anyway."
"Thank you, Geria." Smith wondered how he knew her name was Geria. Nice name. "What happened after I thought there was a storm, Geria?" Smith suppressed a smile.
"Oh, nothing much. I just planted another suggestion in your mind. For now you've forgotten, but you will remember. Shall we go?"
They walked back down the path from the top of the crag, and soon Smith saw other students in groups of two and three. Ahead was the long low school, a dull rectangle of metal perhaps two miles long and half as wide. With Geria, Smith entered through one of the hundreds of doorways and followed her wordlessly up a mechanical staircase.
They flashed past many landings, and after a time Smith followed the girl across one of them and into a long hall.
