"Nope, he couldn't," declared Jensen. "The rats from Thirty-seven
wouldn't stand for it."
"They couldn't do a thing about it," declared the other man. "Meek's
been here six weeks today. That makes him a resident. Six Earth weeks,
the law says. And all that time he's been in sector Twenty-three. They
wouldn't have a leg to stand on. They might squawk but they couldn't
make it stick."
"You're certain of that?" demanded Jensen.
"Dead certain," said the other.
Meek saw them looking at him, felt a queasy feeling steal into his
stomach.
"I couldn't," he told them. "I couldn't do it. I ... I...."
"You go right ahead, Oliver," said Gus. "I wanted to play, of course.
Sort of set my heart on that cup. Had the mantel piece all dusted off
for it. But if I can't play, there ain't another soul I'd rather have
play in my place than you."
"But I don't know a thing about polo," protested Meek.
"You taught it to us, didn't you?" bellowed Jensen. "You pretended like
you knew everything there was to know."
"But I don't," insisted Meek. "You wouldn't let me explain. You kept
telling me all the time what a swell coach I was and when I tried to
argue with you and tell you that I wasn't you yelled me down. I never
saw more than one game in all my life and the only reason I saw it then
was because I found the ticket. It was on the sidewalk and I picked it
up. Somebody had dropped it."
"So you been stringing us along," yelped Jensen. "You been making fools
of us! How do we know but you showed us wrong. You been giving us the
wrong dope."
He advanced on Meek and Meek backed against the wall.
Jensen lifted his fist, held it in front of him as if he were weighing
it.
"I ought to bop you one," he decided. "All of us had ought to bop you
one. Every danged man in this here room has got his shirt bet on the
game because we figured we couldn't lose with a coach like you."
"So have I," said Meek. But it wasn't until he said it that he really
realized he did have his shirt bet on Twenty-three. His spaceship. It
wasn't all he had, of course, but it was the thing that was nearest to
his heart ... the thing he had slaved for thirty years to buy.
He suddenly remembered those years now. Years of bending over account
books in the dingy office back on Earth, watching other men go out in
space, longing to go himself. Counting pennies so that he could go.
Spending only a dime for lunch and eating crackers and cheese instead
of going out for dinner in the evening. Piling up the dollars, slowly
through the years ... dollars to buy the ship that now stood out on
the field, all damage repaired. Sitting, poised for space.
But if Thirty-seven won it wouldn't be his any longer. It would be
Craney's. He'd just made a bet with Craney and there were plenty of
witnesses to back it up.
"Well?" demanded Jensen.
"I will play," said Meek.
"And you really know about the game? You wasn't kidding us?"
Meek looked at the men before him and the expression on their faces
shaped his answer.
He gulped ... gulped again. Then slowly nodded.
"Sure, I know about it," he lied.
They didn't look quite satisfied.
He glanced around, but there was no way of escape. He faced them again,
back pressed against the wall.
He tried to make his voice light and breezy, but he couldn't quite keep
out the croak.
"Haven't played it much in the last few years," he said, "but back when
I was a kid I was a ten-goal man."
They were satisfied at that.
V
Hunched behind the controls, Meek slowly circled Gus' crate, waiting
for the signal, half fearful of what would happen when it came.
Glancing to left and right, he could see the other ships of Sector
Twenty-three, slowly circling too, red identification lights strung
along their hulls.
Ten miles away a gigantic glowing ball danced in the middle of the
space-field, bobbing around like a jigging lantern. And beyond it were
the circling blue lights of the Thirty-seven team. And beyond them the
glowing green space-buoys that marked the Thirty-seven goal line.
Meek bent an attentive ear to the ticking of the motor, listening
intently for the alien click he had detected a moment before. Gus'
ship, to tell the truth, was none too good. It might have been a good
ship once, but now it was worn out. It was sluggish and slow to respond
to the controls, it had a dozen little tricks that kept one on the
jump. It had followed space trails too long, had plumped down to too
many bumpy landings in the maelstrom of the Belt.
Meek sighed gustily. It would have been different if they had let him
take his own ship, but it was only on the condition that he use Gus'
ship that Thirty-seven had agreed to let him play at all. They had
raised a fuss about it, but Twenty-three had the law squarely on its
side.
He stole a glance toward the sidelines and saw hundreds of slowly
cruising ships. Ships crammed with spectators out to watch the game.
Radio ships that would beam a play by play description to be channeled
to every radio station throughout the Solar system. Newsreel ships that
would film the clash of opposing craft. Ships filled with newsmen who
would transmit reams of copy back to Earth and Mars.
Looking at them, Meek shuddered.
How in the world had he ever let himself get into a thing like this? He
was out to see the solar system, not to play a polo game ... especially
a polo game he didn't want to play.
It had been the bugs, of course. If it hadn't been for the bugs, Gus
never would have had the chance to talk him into that coaching business.
He should have spoken out, of course. Told them, flat out, that he
didn't know a thing about polo. Made them understand he wasn't going to
have a thing to do with this silly scheme. But they had shouted at him
and laughed at him and bullied him. Been nice to him, too. That was the
biggest trouble. He was a sucker, he knew, for anyone who was nice to
him. Not many people had been.
Maybe he should have gone to Miss Henrietta Perkins and explained. She
might have listened and understood. Although he wasn't any too sure
about that. She probably had plenty to do with starting the publicity
rolling. After all, it was her job to make a showing on the jobs she
did.
If it hadn't been for Gus dusting off the place on the mantelpiece. If
it hadn't been for the Titan City Junior Chamber of Commerce. If it
hadn't been for all the ballyhoo about the mystery coach.
But more especially, if he'd kept his fool mouth shut and not made that
bet with Craney.
* * * * *
Meek groaned and tried to remember the few things he did know about
polo. And he couldn't think of a single thing, not even some of the
things he had made up and told the boys.
Suddenly a rocket flared from the referee's ship and with a jerk Meek
hauled back the throttle. The ship gurgled and stuttered and for a
moment, heart in his throat, Meek thought it was going to blow up right
then and there.
But it didn't. It gathered itself together and leaped, forcing Meek
hard against the chair, snapping back his head. Dazed, he reached out
for the repulsor trigger.
Ahead the glowing ball bounced and quivered, jumped this way and that
as the ships spun in a mad melee with repulsor beams whipping out like
stabbing knives.
Two of the ships crashed and fell apart like matchboxes. A third,
trying a sharp turn above the field of play, came unstuck and strewed
itself across fifty miles of space.
Substitute ships dashed in from the sidelines, signalled by the
referee's blinking light. Rescue ships streaked out to pick up the
players, salvage ships to clear away the pieces.
For a fleeting moment, Meek got the bobbing sphere in the cross-hairs
and squeezed the trigger. The ball jumped as if someone had smacked it
with his fist, sailed across the field.
Fighting to bring the ship around, Meek yelled in fury at its
slowness. Desperately pouring on the juice, he watched with agony as a
blue-lighted ship streamed down across the void, heading for the ball.
The ship groaned in every joint, protesting and twisting as if in
agony, as Meek forced it around. Suddenly there was a snap and the
sudden swoosh of escaping air. Startled, Meek looked up. Bare ribs
stood out against star-spangled space. A plate had been ripped off!
Face strained behind the visor of his spacesuit, hunched over the
controls, he waited for the rest of the plates to go. By some miracle
they hung on. One worked loose and flapped weirdly as the ship shivered
in the turn.
But the turn had taken too long and Meek was too late. The blue-lamped
ship already had the ball, was streaking for the goal line. Jensen
somehow had had sense enough to refuse to be sucked out of goalie
position, and now he charged in to intercept.
But he muffed his chance. He dived in too fast and missed with his
repulsor beam by a mile at least. The ball sailed over the lighted
buoys and the first chukker was over with Thirty-seven leading by one
score.
The ships lined up again.
The rocket flared from the starter's ship and the ships plunged out.
One of Thirty-seven's ships began to lose things. Plates broke loose
and fell away, a rocket snapped its moorings and sailed off at a
tangent, spouting gouts of flame, the structural ribs came off and
strewed themselves along like spilling toothpicks.
Battered by repulsor beams, the ball suddenly bounced upward and Meek,
trailing the field, waiting for just such a chance, played a savage
tune on the tube controls.
The ship responded with a snap, executing a half roll and a hairpin
turn that shook the breath from Meek. Two more plates tore off in the
turn, but the ship plowed on. Now the ball was dead ahead and Meek gave
it the works. The beam hit squarely and Meek followed through. The
second chukker was over and the score was tied.
Not until he was curving back above the Thirty-seven goal line, did
Meek have time to wonder what had happened to the ship. It was sluggish
no longer. It was full of zip. Almost like driving his own sleek craft.
Almost as if, the ship knew where he wanted it to go and went there.
A hint of motion on the instrument panel caught his eye and he bent
close to see what it was. He stiffened. The panel seemed to be alive.
Seemed to be crawling.
He bent closer and froze. It was crawling. There was no doubt of that.
Crawling with rock-bugs.
* * * * *
Breath whistling between his teeth, Meek ducked his head under the
panel. Every wire, every control was oozing bugs!
For a moment he sat paralyzed by the thoughts that flickered through
his brain.
Gus, he knew, would have his scalp for this. Because he was the one
that had brought the bugs over to the rock where Gus lived and kept the
ship. They thought, of course, they had caught all of them that were
on his suit, but now it was clear they hadn't. Some of them must have
gotten away and found the ship. They would have made straight for it,
of course, because of the alloys that were in it. Why bother with a
spacesuit or anything else when there was a ship around.
Only there were too many of them. There were thousands in the
instrument panel and other thousands in the controls and he couldn't
have brought back that many. Not if he'd hauled them back in pails.
What was it Gus had said about them burrowing into metal just like
chiggers burrow into human flesh?
Chiggers attacked humans to lay their eggs. Maybe ... maybe....
A battalion of the bugs trooped across the face of an indicator and
Meek saw they were smaller than the ones he had seen back on Gus' rock.
There was no doubt about it. They were young bugs. Bugs that has just
hatched out. Thousands of them ... millions of them, maybe! And they
wouldn't be in the instruments and controls alone, but all through the
ship. They'd be in the motors and the firing mechanisms ... all the
places where the best alloys were used.
Meek wrung his hands, watching them play tag across the panel. If
they'd had to hatch, why couldn't they have waited. Just until the game
was over, anyhow. That would have been all he'd asked. But they hadn't
and here he was, with a couple of million bugs or so right smack in his
lap.
The rocket flared again and the ships shot out.
Bitterness chewing at him, Meek flung the ship out savagely. What
did it matter what happened now. Gus would take the hide off him,
rheumatism or no rheumatism, as soon as he found out about the bugs.
For a wild moment, he hoped he would crack up. Maybe the ship would
fall apart like some of the others had. Like the old one hoss shay the
poet had written about centuries ago. The ship had lost so many plates
that even now it was like flying a space-going box-kite.
Suddenly a ship loomed directly ahead, diving from the zenith. Meek,
forgetting his half-formed hope of a crackup a second before, froze
in terror, but his fingers acted by pure instinct, stabbing at keys.
Although in the petrified second that seemed half an eternity, Meek
knew the ships would crash before he even touched the keys. And even as
he thought it, the ship ducked in a nerve-rending jerk and they were
skinning past, hulls almost touching. Another jerk and more plates gone
and there was the ball, directly ahead, with the repulsor beam already
licking out.
Meek's jaw fell and a chill ran through his body and he couldn't move
a muscle. For he hadn't even touched the trigger and yet the repulsor
beam was flaring out, driving the ball ahead of it while the ship
twisted and squirmed its way through a mass of fighting craft.
Hands dangling limply at his side, Meek gaped in terror and disbelief.
He wasn't touching the controls, and yet the ship was like a thing
bewitched. A split second later the ball was over the goal and the ship
was curving back, repulsor beam snapped off.
"It's the bugs!" Meek whispered to himself, lips scarcely moving. "The
bugs have taken over!"
The craft he was riding, he knew, was no longer just a ship, but
a collection of rock-bugs. Bugs that could work out mathematical
equations. And now were playing polo!
For what was polo, anyhow, except a mathematical equation, a problem of
using certain points of force at certain points in space to arrive at
a predetermined end? Back on Gus' rock the bugs had worked as a unit
to solve equations ... and the new hatch in the ship was working as a
unit, too, to solve another kind of problem ... the problem of taking
a certain ball to a certain point despite certain variable and random
factors in the form of opposing spaceships.
Tentatively, half fearfully, Meek stabbed cautiously at a key which
should have turned the ship. The ship didn't turn. Meek snatched his
hand away as if the key had burned his finger.
* * * * *
Back on the line the ship wheeled into position of its own accord and a
moment later was off again. Meek clung to his chair with shaking hands.
There was, he knew, no use of even pretending he was trying to operate
the ship. There was just one thing that he was glad of. No one could
see him sitting there, doing nothing.
But the time would come ... and soon ... when he would have to do
something. For he couldn't let the ship return to the Ring. To do
that would be to infest the other ships parked there, spread the bugs
throughout the solar system. And those bugs definitely were something
the solar system could get along without.
The ship shuddered and twisted, weaving its way through the pack of
players. More plates ripped loose. Glancing up, Meek could see the
glory of Saturn through the gleaming ribs.
Then the ball was over the line and Meek's team mates were shrieking
at him over the radio in his spacesuit ... happy, glee-filled yells
of triumph. He didn't answer. He was too busy ripping out the control
wires. But it didn't help. Even while he was doing it the ship went on
unhampered and piled up another score.
Apparently the bugs didn't need the controls to make the ship do what
they wanted. More than likely they were in control of the firing
mechanism at its very source. Maybe, and the thought curled the hair on
Meek's neck, they were the firing mechanism. Maybe they had integrated
themselves with the very structure of the entire mechanism of the ship.
That would make the ship alive. A living chunk of machinery that paid
no attention to the man who sat at the controls.
Meanwhile, the ship made another goal....
There was a way to stop the bugs ... only one way ... but it was
dangerous.
But probably not half as dangerous, Meek told himself, as Gus or the
Junior Chamber or the Thirty-seven team ... especially the Thirty-seven
team ... if any of them found out what was going on.
He found a wrench and crawled back along the shivering ship.
Working in a frenzy of fear and need for haste, Meek took off the plate
that sealed the housing of the rear rocket assembly. Breath hissing in
his throat, he fought the burrs that anchored the tubes. There were a
lot of them and they didn't come off easily. Rockets had to be anchored
securely ... securely enough so the blast of atomic fire within their
chambers wouldn't rip them free.
Meanwhile, the ship piled up the score.
Loose burrs rolled and danced along the floor and Meek knew the ship
was in the thick of play again. Then they were curving back. Another
goal!
Suddenly the rocket assembly shook a little, began to vibrate. Wielding
the wrench like a madman, knowing he had seconds at the most, Meek spun
two or three more bolts, then dropped the wrench and ran. Leaping for
a hole from which a plate had been torn, he caught a rib, swung with
every ounce of power he had, launching himself into space.
His right hand fumbled for the switch of the suit's rocket motor, found
it, snapped it on to full acceleration. Something seemed to hit him on
the head and he sailed into the depths of blackness.