9 Tales of Space and Time

by Anthology

  “On what grounds?” asked another surgeon politely.

  “That I’m not a Dorfellow!”

  “Ninety-four point seven per cent of you is, according to Surgeon Trink’s requisition of limbs and organs. How much more of a citizen can any individual be?”

  Gam Nex Biad confirmed the ruling and Savold subsided. While the board of surgeons discussed the point it had begun with—how to adapt Savold to life on Dorfel—he thought the situation through. He had no legal or moral recourse. If he was to get out of his predicament, it would have to be through shrewd resourcefulness and he would never have become a major in the space fleet if he hadn’t had plenty of that.

  Yeah, shrewd resourcefulness, thought Savold bitterly, jouncing unsteadily on his single bedspring leg on a patch of unappealing topsoil a little distance from the settlement. He had counted on something that didn’t exist here—the kind of complex approach that Earth doctors and authorities would have used on his sort of problem, from the mitigation of laws to psychological conditioning, all of it complicated and every stage allowing a chance to work his way free.

  But the board of surgeons had agreed on a disastrously simple course of treatment for him. He was not to be fed by anybody and he could not sleep in any of the underground rock apartments, including the dormitory for unmated males.

  “When he’s hungry enough, he’ll go back to mining,” the oldest surgeon had told the equivalent of a judge, a local teacher who did part-time work passing on legal questions that did not have to be ruled on by the higher courts. “And if he has no place to stay except with Gam Nex Biad’s family, which is his own, naturally, he’ll go there when he’s tired of living out in the open all by himself.”

  The judge thought highly of the decision and gave it official approval.

  Savold did not mind being out in the open, but he was far from being all by himself. Gam Nex Biad was a constant nuisance, nagging at him to get in a good day’s drilling and then go home to the wife, kiddies, and their cozy, hollowed-out quarters, with company over to celebrate his return with a lavish supply of capsuled lubricating oil. Savold obstinately refused, though he found himself salivating, or something very much like it.

  The devil of the situation was that he was hungry and there was not a single bit of rock to munch on. That was the purpose of this fenced-in plot of ground—it was like hard labor in the prisons back on Earth, where the inmates ate only if they broke their quota of rock, except that here the inmates would eat the rock they broke. The only way Savold could get out of the enclosure was by drilling under the high fence. He had already tried to bounce over it and discovered he couldn’t.

  “Come on,” Gam Nex Biad argued in his mind. “Why fight it? Were a miner and there’s no life like the life of a miner. The excitement of boring your way through a lode, making a meal out of the rich ore! Miners get the choicest tidbits, you know—that’s our compensation for working so hard and taking risks.”

  “Some compensation,” sneered Savold, looking wistfully up at the stars and enviously wishing he were streaking between them in his scout.

  “A meal of iron ore would go pretty well right now, wouldn’t it?” Gam Nex Biad tempted. “And I know where there are some veins of tin and sulphur. You don’t find them lying around on the surface, eh? Nonminers get just traces of the rare metals to keep them healthy, but we can stuff yourself all we want—”

  “Shut up!”

  “—and some pools of mercury. Not big ones, I admit, but all we’d want is a refreshing gulp to wash down those ores I was telling you about.”

  Resisting the thought of the ores was hard enough, for Savold was rattlingly empty, but the temptation of the smooth, cold mercury would have roused the glutton in anyone.

  “All right,” he growled, “but get this straight—we’re not going back to your family. They’re your problem, not mine.”

  “But how could I go back to them if you won’t go?”

  “I’m glad you see it my way. Now where are those ores and that mercury?”

  “Dive,” said Gam Nex Biad. “I’ll give you the directions.”

  Savold took a few bounces to work up speed and spin, then shot into the air and came down on the point of his awl-shaped head, which bit through the soft topsoil as if through—he shuddered—so much water. As a Dorfellow, he had to avoid water; it eroded and corroded and caused deposits of rust in the digestive and circulatory systems. There was a warmth that was wonderfully soothing caused by drilling into rock. He ate some to get back his strength, but left room for the main course and the dessert.

  “Pretty nice, isn’t it?” asked Gam Nex Biad as they gouged a comfortable tunnel back toward the settlement. “Nonminers don’t know what they’re missing.”

  “Quiet,” Savold ordered surlily, but he had to confess to himself that it was pleasant. His three knee-action arms rotated him at a comfortable speed, the horn spades pushing back the loose rock; and he realized why Gam Nex Biad had been upset when Surgeon Trink left Savold’s human arms attached. They were in the way and they kept getting scratched. The row of socketed bulbs gave him all the light he needed. That, he decided, had been their original purpose. Using them to communicate with must have been one of their first steps toward civilization.

  Savold had been repressing thoughts ever since the meeting of the board of surgeons. Now he experimentally called his inner partner.

  “Um?” asked Gam Nex Biad absently.

  “Something I wanted to discuss with you,” Savold said.

  “Later. I sense the feldspar coming up. We head north there.”

  Savold turned the drilling over to him, then allowed the buried thoughts to emerge. They were thoughts of escape and he had kept them hidden because he was positive that Gam Nex Biad would have betrayed them. He had been trying incessantly, wheedlingly, to sell Savold on mining and returning to the family.

  Hell with that, Savold thought grimly now. He was getting back to Earth somehow—Earth Command first, Marge second. No, surgery second, Marge third, he corrected. She wouldn’t want him this way . . .

  “Manganese,” said Gam Nex Biad abruptly, and Savold shut off his thinking. “I always did like a few mouthfuls as an appetizer.”

  The rock had a pleasantly spicy taste, much like a cocktail before dinner. Then they went on, with the Dorfellow giving full concentration to finding his way from deposit to deposit.

  The thing to do, Savold reasoned, was to learn where the scout ship was being kept. He had tried to sound out Gam Nex Biad subtly, but it must have been too subtle—the Dorfellow had guessed uninterestedly that the ship would be at one of the metal-fabricating centers, and Savold had not dared ask him which one. Gam Nex Biad couldn’t induce him to become a miner and Dorfellow family man, but that didn’t mean he could escape over Gam Nex Biad’s opposition.

  Savold did not intend to find out. Shrewd resourcefulness, that was the answer. It hadn’t done him much good yet, but the day he could not outfox these rock-eaters, he’d turn in his commission. All he had to do was find the ship . . .

  Bloated and tired, Savold found himself in a main tunnel thoroughfare back to the settlement. The various ores, he disgustedly had to confess to himself, were as delicious as the best human foods, and there was nothing at all like the flavor and texture of pure liquid mercury. He discovered he had some in his cupped cilia hands.

  “To keep for a snack?” he asked Gam Nex Biad.

  “I thought you wouldn’t mind letting Prad Fim and the children have a little,” the Dorfellow said hopefully. “You ought to see them light up whenever I bring it home!”

  “Not a chance! We’re not going there, so I might as well drop it.” Savold tried to open his cilia hands. They stayed cupped. That was when he realized that he had supposed correctly. Gam Nex Biad could prevent him from escaping.

  Savold had to get some sleep. He was ready to topple with exhaustion. But the tunnels were unsafe—a Dorfellow traveling through one on an emergency night errand wo
uld crash into him hard enough to leave nothing but flinty splinters. And the night air felt chill and hostile, so it was impossible to sleep above ground.

  “Please make up your mind,” Gam Nex Biad begged. “I can’t stay awake much longer and you’ll just go blundering around and get into trouble.”

  “But they’ve got to put us up somewhere,” argued Savold. “How about the hospital? We’re still a patient, aren’t we?”

  “We were discharged. And nobody else is allowed to let us stay in any apartment—except one.”

  “I know, I know,” Savold replied with weary impatience. “Forget it. We’re not going there.”

  “But it’s so comfortable there—”

  “Forget it, I told you!”

  “Oh, all right,” Gam Nex Biad said resignedly. “But we’re not going to find anything as pleasant and restful as my old sleeping boulder. It’s soft limestone, you know, and grooved to fit our body. I’d like to see anybody not fall asleep instantly on that good old flat boulder . . .”

  Savold tried to resist, but he was worn out from the operation, digging, and the search for a place to spend the night.

  “Just look at it, that’s all,” Gam Nex Biad coaxed. “If you don’t like it, we’ll sleep anywhere you say. Fair enough?”

  “I suppose so,” admitted Savold. The hewn-rock apartment was quiet, at least; everybody was asleep. He’d lie down for a while, just enough to get some rest, and clear out before the household awoke . . .

  But Prad Fim and the children were clustered around the boulder when he opened his eyes. Each of them had five arms to fight off. And there was Surgeon Trink, the elder of the board of surgeons, and the local teacher-judge all waiting to talk to him when the homecoming was over with.

  “The treatment worked!” cried the judge. “He came back!”

  “I never doubted it,” the elder said complacently.

  “You know what this means?” Surgeon Trink asked Savold.

  “No, what?” Savold inquired warily, afraid of the answer.

  “You can show us how to operate your machine,” declared the judge. “It isn’t that we lack engineering ability, you understand. We simply never had a machine as large and complex before. We could have, of course—I’m sure you’re aware of that—but the matter just never came up. We could work it out by ourselves, but it would be easier to have you explain it.”

  “By returning, you’ve shown that you have attained a degree of stability,” added the elder. “We couldn’t trust you with the machine while you were so disturbed.”

  “Did you know this?” Savold silently challenged Gam Nex Biad.

  “Well, certainly,” came the voiceless answer.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go floundering around instead?”

  “Because you bewilder me. This loathing for our body, which I’d always been told was quite attractive, and for mining and living with our family—wanting to reach this thing you call Earth Command and the creature with the strange name—Marge, isn’t it? I could never guess how you would react to anything. It’s not easy living with an alien mentality.”

  “You don’t have to explain. I’ve got the same problem, remember.”

  “That’s true,” Gam Nex Biad silently agreed. “But I’m afraid you have to take it from here. All I know is mining, not metal-fabricating centers.”

  Savold suppressed his elation. The less Gam Nex Biad knew from this point on, the less he could guess—and the smaller chance that he could betray Savold.

  “We can leave right now,” the judge was saying. “The family can follow as soon as you’ve built a home for them.”

  “Why should they follow?” Savold demanded. “I thought you said I was going to be allowed to operate the ship.”

  “Demonstrate and explain it, really,” amended the judge. “We’re not absolutely certain that you are stable, you see. As for the family, you’re bound to get lonesome . . .”

  Savold stared at Prad Fim and the children. Gam Nex Biad was brimming with affection for them, but Savold saw them only as hideous ore-crushing monsters. He tried to keep them from saying good-by with embraces, but they came at him with violent leaps that threatened to chip bits out of his body with their grotesque point awl heads. He was glad to get away, especially with Gam Nex Biad making such a damned slobbering nuisance of himself.

  “Let’s go!” Savold blinked frantically at the judge, and dived after him into an express tunnel.

  While Gam Nex Biad was busily grieving, Savold stealthily worked out his plans. He would glance casually at the ship, glow some mild compliment at the repair job, make a pretense of explaining how the controls worked—and blast off into space at the first opportunity, even if he had to wait for days. He knew he would never get another chance; they’d keep him away from the ship if that attempt failed. And Gam Nex Biad was a factor, too. Savold had to hit the takeoff button before his partner suspected or their body would be paralyzed in the conflict between them.

  It was a very careful plan and it called for iron discipline, but Savold had plenty of that. All he had to do was maintain his iron selfcontrol.

  He did—until he saw the ship right ahead on the hole-pocked plain. Then his control broke and he bounced with enormous, desperate leaps toward it.

  “Wait! Wait!” glared the judge, and others from the fabricating center sprang toward the ship.

  Savold managed to reach the pilot room and slam the door before Gam Nex Biad, asking in frightened confusion “What are you doing?” locked their muscles so that Savold was unable to move.

  “What am I doing?” Savold glinted venomously. “Getting off your lousy planet and back to a sane world where people live like people instead of like worms and moles!”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said the Dorfellow anxiously, “but I must stop you until the authorities say it’s all right.”

  “You can’t stop me!” Savold exulted. “You can paralyze everything except my own arms!”

  And that, of course, was the ultimate secret he had been hiding from Gam Nex Biad.

  His finger slammed down the takeoff button. The power plant roared and the ship lifted swiftly toward the sky.

  It began to spin.

  Then it flipped over and rushed suicidally at the ground.

  “They did something wrong to the ship!” cried Savold.

  “Wrong?” repeated Gam Nex Biad vacantly. “It seems to be working fine.”

  “But it’s supposed to be heading up!”

  “Oh, no,” said Gam Nex Biad as the converted ship started to drill. “Our machines never go that way. There’s no rock up there.”