[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January
1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_This little alien beggar could dictate his own terms, but how
could he--and how could anyone find out what those terms might be?_
The flivver descended vertically toward the green planet circling the
old, orange sun.
It was a spaceship, but not the kind men had once dreamed about. The
flivver was shaped like a crude bullet, blunt at one end of a fat
cylinder and tapering abruptly to a point at the other. It had been
slapped together out of sheet metal and insulation board, and it sold,
fully equipped, for $15,730. It didn't behave like a spaceship, either.
As it hurtled down, its speed increased with dramatic swiftness. Then,
at the last instant before impact, it stopped. Just like that.
A moment later, it thumped a last few inches into the ankle-deep grass
and knee-high white flowers of the meadow. It was a shock of a jar that
made the sheet-metal walls boom like thunder machines. The flivver
rocked unsteadily on its flat stern before it decided to stay upright.
Then all was quiet--outside.
Inside the big, central cabin, Grampa waved his pircuit irately in the
air. "Now look what you made me do! Just when I had the blamed thing
practically whipped, too!"
Grampa was a white-haired 90-year-old who could still go a fast round
or two with a man (or woman) half his age, but he had a habit of
lapsing into tantrum when he got annoyed.
"Now, Grampa," Fred soothed, but his face was concerned. Fred, once
called Young Fred, was Grampa's only son. He was sixty and his hair had
begun to gray at the temples. "That landing was pretty rough, Junior."
* * * * *
Junior was Fred's only son. Because he was thirty-five and capable
of exercising adult judgment and because he had the youngest adult
reflexes, he sat in the pilot's chair, the control stick between his
knees, his thumb still over the Off-On button on top. "I know it,
Fred," he said, frowning. "This world fooled me. It has a diameter
less than that of Mercury and yet a gravitational pull as great as
Earth."
Grampa started to say something, but an 8-year-old boy looked up from
the navigator's table beside the big computer and said, "Well, gosh,
Junior, that's why we picked this planet. We fed all the orbital data
into Abacus, and Abacus said that orbital perturbations indicated that
the second planet was unusually heavy for its size. Then Fred said,
'That looks like heavy metals', and you said, 'Maybe uranium--'"
"That's enough, Four," Junior interrupted. "Never mind what I said."
Those were the Peppergrass men, four generations of them, looking
remarkably alike, although some vital element seemed to have dwindled
until Four looked pale and thin-faced and wizened.
"And, Four," Reba said automatically, "don't call your father 'Junior.'
It sounds disrespectful."
Reba was Four's mother and Junior's wife. On her own, she was a
red-haired beauty with the loveliest figure this side of Antares. That
Junior had won her was, to Grampa, the most hopeful thing he had ever
noticed about the boy.
"But everybody calls Junior 'Junior,'" Four complained. "Besides, Fred
is Junior's father and Junior calls him 'Fred.'"
"That's different," Reba said.
Grampa was still waving his puzzle circuit indignantly. "See!" The
pircuit was a flat box equipped with pushbuttons and thirteen slender
openings in the top. One of the openings was lighted. "That landing
made me push the wrong button and the dad-blasted thing beat me again."
"Stop picking on Junior," Joyce said sharply. She was Junior's mother
and Fred's wife, still slim and handsome as she approached sixty, but
somehow ice water had replaced the warm blood in her veins. "I'm sure
he did the best he could."
"Anybody talks about gravitational pull," Grampa said, snorting,
"deserves anything anybody could say about him. There's no such thing,
Junior. You ought to know by now that gravitation is the effect of the
curving of space-time around matter. Einstein proved that two hundred
years ago."
"Go back to your games, Grampa," Fred said impatiently. "We've got work
to do."
* * * * *
Grampa knitted his bushy, white eyebrows and petulantly pushed the last
button on his pircuit. The last light went out. "You've got work to
do, have you? Whose flivver do you think this is, anyhow?"
"It belongs to all of us," Four said shrilly. "You gave us all a sixth
share."
"That's right, Four," Grampa muttered, "so I did. But whose money
bought it?"
"You bought it, Grampa," Fred said.
"That's right! And who invented the gravity polarizer and the space
flivver? Eh? Who made possible this gallivanting all over space?"
"You, Grampa," Fred said.
"You bet! And who made one hundred million dollars out of it that the
rest of you vultures are just hanging around to gobble up when I die?"
"And who spent it all trying to invent perpetual motion machines and
longevity pills," Joyce said bitterly, "and fixed it so we'd have to
go searching for uranium and habitable worlds all through this deadly
galaxy? You, Grampa!"
"Well, now," Grampa protested, "I got a little put away yet. You'll be
sorry when I'm dead and gone."
"You're never going to die, Grampa," Joyce said harshly. "Just
before we left, you bought a hundred-year contract with that
Life-Begins-At-Ninety longevity company."
"Well, now," said Grampa, blinking, "how'd you find out about that?
Well, now!" In confusion, he turned back to the pircuit and jabbed a
button. Thirteen slim lights sprang on. "I'll get you this time!"
Four stretched and stood up. He looked curiously into the corner by the
computer where Grampa's chair stood. "You brought that pircuit from
Earth, didn't you? What's the game?"
Grampa looked up, obviously relieved to drop his act of intense
concentration. "I'll tell you, boy. You play against the pircuit,
taking turns, and you can put out one, two or three lights. The player
who makes the other one turn out the last light is the winner."
"That's simple," Four said without hesitation. "The winning strategy is
to--"
"Don't be a kibitzer!" Grampa snapped. "When I need help, I'll ask
for it. No dad-blamed machine is gonna outthink Grampa!" He snorted
indignantly.
* * * * *
Four shrugged his narrow shoulders and wandered to the view screen.
Within it was the green horizon, curving noticeably. Four angled the
picture in toward the ship, sweeping through green, peaceful woodland
and plain and blue lake until he stared down into the meadow at the
flivver's stern.
"Look!" he said suddenly. "This planet not only has flora--it has
fauna." He rushed to the air lock.
"Four!" Reba called out warningly.
"It's all right, Reba," Four assured her. "The air is within one per
cent of Earth-normal and the bio-analyzer can find no micro-organisms
viable within the Terran spectrum."
"What about macro-organisms--" Reba began, but the boy was gone
already. Reba's face was troubled. "That boy!" she said to Junior.
"Sometimes I think we've made a terrible mistake with him. He should
have friends, play-mates. He's more like a little old man than a boy."
But Junior nodded meaningfully at Fred and disappeared into the chart
room. Fred followed casually. Then, as the door slid shut behind him,
he asked impatiently. "Well, what's all the mystery?"
"No use bothering the others yet," Junior said, his face puzzled. "You
see, I didn't let the flivver drop those last few inches. The polarizer
quit."
"Quit!"
"That's not the worst. I tried to take it up again. The flivver--it
won't budge!"
* * * * *
The thing was a featureless blob, a two-foot sphere of raspberry
gelatin, but it was alive. It rocked back and forth in front of Four.
It opened a raspberry-color pseudo-mouth and said plaintively, "Fweep?
Fweep?"
Joyce drew her chair farther back toward the wall, revulsion on her
face. "Four! Get that nasty thing out of here!"
"You mean Fweep?" Four asked in astonishment.
"I mean that thing, whatever you call it." Joyce fluttered her hand
impatiently. "Get it out!"