"I do," the whiskers said. The hand tilted the bottle and the bottle
gurgled.
West glanced swiftly around the room. No radio. That made it simpler.
If there had been a radio he would have had to smash it. For, he
realized now, it had been a silly thing to do, stopping on this moon.
No one knew where he was ... and that was the way it should have stood.
West snapped his visor up.
"Drinking myself to death," the whiskers told him.
West stared, astounded at the utter poverty, at the absolute squalor of
the place.
"Three years," said the man. "Not a single sober breath in three solid
years." He hiccoughed. "Getting me," he said. His left hand came up and
thumped his shrunken chest. Lint flew from the ragged underwear. The
right hand still clutched the bottle.
"Earth years," the whiskers explained. "Three Earth years. Not Pluto
years."
* * * * *
A thing that chattered came out of the shadows in one corner of the hut
and leaped upon the bed. It hunched itself beside the man and stared
leeringly at West, its mouth a slit that drooled across its face, its
puckered hide a horror in the sickly light.
"Meet Annabelle," said the man. He whistled at the thing and it
clambered to his shoulder, cuddling against his cheek.
West shivered at the sight.
"Just passing through?" the man inquired.
"My name is West," West told him. "Heading for Pluto."
"Ask them to show you the painting," said the man. "Yes, you must see
the painting."
"The painting?"
"You deaf?" asked the man, belligerently. "I said a painting. You
understand--a picture."
"I understand," said West. "But I didn't know there were any paintings
there. Didn't even know there was anybody there."
"Sure there is," said the man. "There's Louis and--"
He lifted the bottle and took a snort.
"I got alcoholism," said the man. "Good thing, alcoholism. Keeps colds
away. Can't catch a cold when you got alcoholism. Kills you quicker
than a cold, though. Why, you might go on for years having colds--"
"Look," urged West, "you have to tell me about Pluto. About who's
there. And the painting. How come you know about them?"
The eyes regarded him with drunken cunning.
"You'd have to do something for me. Couldn't give you information like
that out of the goodness of my heart."
"Of course," agreed West. "Anything that you would like. You just name
it."
"You got to take Annabelle out of here," the man told him. "Take her
back where she belongs. It isn't any place for a girl like her. No fit
life for her to lead. Living with a sodden wreck like me. Used to be a
great man once ... yes, sir, a great man. It all came of looking for a
bottle. One particular bottle. Had to sample all of them. Every last
one. And when I sampled them, there was nothing else to do but drink
them up. They'd spoil for sure if you let them stand around. And who
wants a lot of spoiled liquor cluttering up the place?"
He took another shot.
"Been at it ever since," he explained. "Almost got them now. Ain't many
of them left. Used to think that I'd find the right bottle before it
was too late and then everything would be all right. Wouldn't do me no
good to find it now, because I'm going to die. Enough left to last me,
though. Aim to die plastered. Happy way to die."
"But what about those people on Pluto?" demanded West.
The whiskers snickered. "I fooled them. They gave me my choice. Take
anything you want, they said. Big-hearted, you understand. Pals to the
very last. So I took the whisky. Cases of it. They didn't know, you
see. I tricked them."
"I'm sure you did," said West. Tiny, icy feet ran up and down his
spine. For there was madness here, he knew, but madness with a pattern.
Somewhere, somehow, this twisted talk would fall into a pattern that
would make sense.
"But something went wrong," the man declared. "Something went wrong."
Silence whistled in the room.
"You see, Mr. Best," the man declared. "I--"
"West," said West. "Not Best. West."
The man did not seem to notice. "I'm going to die, you understand. Any
minute, maybe. Got a liver and heart and either one could kill me.
Drinking does that to you. Never used to drink. Got into the habit when
I was sampling all these bottles. Got a taste for it. Then there wasn't
anything to do--"
He hunched forward.
"Promise you will take Annabelle," he croaked.
Annabelle tittered at West, slobber drooling from her mouth.
"But I can't take her back," West protested, "unless I know where she
came from. You have to tell me that."
The man waggled a finger. "From far away," he croaked, "and yet not so
very far. Not so very far if you know the way."
West eyed Annabelle with the gorge rising in his throat.
"I will take her," he said. "But you have to tell me where."
"Thank you, Guest," said the man. He lifted the bottle and let it
gurgle.
"Not Guest," said West, patiently. "My name is--"
The man toppled forward off the bed, sprawled across the floor. The
bottle rolled crazily, spilling liquor in sporadic gushes.
West leaped forward, knelt beside the man and lifted him. The whiskers
moved and a whisper came from their tangled depths, a gasping whisper
that was scarcely more than a waning breath.
"Tell Louis that his painting--"
"Louis?" yelled West. "Louis who? What about--"
The whisper came again. "Tell him ... someday ... he'll paint a wrong
place and then...."
Gently West laid the man back on the floor and stepped away. The whisky
bottle still rocked to and fro beneath a chair where it had come to
rest.
* * * * *
Something glinted at the head of the cot and West walked to where it
hung. It was a watch, a shining watch, polished with years of care.
It swung slowly from a leather thong tied to the rod that formed the
cot's head, where a man could reach out in the dark and read it.
West took it in his hand and turned it over, saw the engraving that ran
across its back. Bending low, he read the inscription in the feeble
light.
To Walter J. Darling, from class of '16,
Mars Polytech.
West straightened, understanding and disbelief stirring in his mind.
Walter J. Darling, that huddle on the floor? Walter J. Darling, one
of the solar system's greatest biologists, dead in this filthy hut?
Darling, teacher for years at Mars Polytechnical Institute, that
shrunken, liquor-sodden corpse in shoddy underwear?
West wiped his forehead with the back of his space-gloved hand. Darling
had been a member of that mysterious government commission assigned
to the cold laboratories on Pluto, sent there to develop artificial
hormones aimed at controlled mutation of the human race. A mission
that had been veiled in secrecy from the first because it was feared,
and rightly so, that revelation of its purpose might lead to outraged
protests from a humanity that could not imagine why it should be
improved biologically.
A mission, thought West, that had set out in mystery and ended in
mystery, mystery that had sent whispers winging through the solar
system. Shuddery whispers.
Louis? That would be Louis Nevin, another member of the Pluto
commission. He was the man Darling had tried to tell about just before
he died.
And Nevin must still be out here on Pluto, must still be alive despite
the message that had come to Earth.
But the painting didn't fit. Nevin wasn't an artist. He was a
biologist, scarcely second to Darling.
The message of three years before had been a phony, then. There were
men still on the planet.
And that meant, West told himself bitterly, that his own plan had gone
awry. For Pluto was the only place in the Solar System where there
would be food and shelter and to which no one would ever come.
He remembered how he had planned it all so carefully ... how it had
seemed a perfect answer. There would be many years' supply of food
stacked in the storerooms, there would be comfortable living quarters,
and there would be tools and equipment should he ever need them.
And, of course, the Thing, whatever it might be. The horror that had
closed the planet, that had set the space patrol to guard the planet's
loneliness.
But West had never been too concerned with what he might find on Pluto,
for whatever it might be, it could be no worse than the bitterness that
was his on Earth.
There was something going on at the Pluto laboratories. Something that
the government didn't know about or that the government had suppressed
along with that now infamous report of three years before.
Something that Darling could have told him had he wanted to ... or had
he been able. But now Walter J. Darling was past all telling. West
would have to find out by himself.
West stepped to where he lay, lifted him to the cot and covered him
with a tattered blanket.
Perched on the cot head, Annabelle chattered and giggled and drooled.
"Come here, you," said West. "Come on over here."
Annabelle came, slowly and coyly. West lifted her squeamishly, thrust
her into an outer pocket and zipped it shut. He started toward the
doorway.
On the way out he picked the empty bottle from the floor, added it to
the pyramid outside.