We stood with our backs to the Venus on the Half Shell sign running
across the upper part of the cabin wall and waited. After a little
while the small sportster's hatch swung out. We squinted at it through
Venus' dazzling white sunless daylight and waited.
A head popped up. Big head with a mane of white hair and pink cheeks
and some loose extra chins and a strong jaw and a small red flower of
a mouth. Below the head was expensive sports clothing. Very expensive.
All suede and linen and the latest hunting styles you see in the
catalogues. He looked like a million bucks worth of something out of a
Spaceman's magazine. He snapped his fingers and said, "Boy! Our bags."
Harry looked at me again. I looked at Harry. I placed the flat of my
hand against the small of his back and pushed. He went stumbling across
the mud toward the sportster spaceship. When he got there he managed to
say, "I'll take your bags, sir."
"I'll set up your tent, sir," I said.
"Tent?" the man in the sportster repeated. "Your classified ad in
Spaceman's didn't say anything about a tent."
"That's Venus on the Half Shell," I said. "Outdoor living. Venus as
Venus is to the natives. But it's perfectly safe, sir.
"We have a stockade, as you can see."
"I don't know about any tent or roughing it," the sportsman boomed.
"Well," I said.
"Game running good?" he asked.
"The best," I said. "A blind man could bag the legal limit of roupas
and konees and jukets and ferzes in an afternoon."
"Better hope it takes longer'n that, son," the sportsman boomed again.
"Didn't come all the way to Venus for an afternoon's walk in the woods."
"Walk in the woods," I said, nudging Harry who had come back staggering
under the weight of several suitcases. "Walk in the woods."
"Yes?" the sportsman said.
"What I mean is, there's man-sized hunting around here. Really
man-sized, sir."
"Daughter's with me," he said, wet-blanketing whatever sales pitch I
might have made. "Hope we haven't made a mistake. Could have gone on to
Venus Joe's. I know Venus Joe's. But I liked your ad in Spaceman's. I
always go by ads in Spaceman's. Know why?"
"No," I said, shaking my head.
"I'm Jason Woods Stevenson," he said, swinging his two-hundred pounds
of hard sportsman muscle down the hatch and walking athletically across
the swamp toward me.
"Jason Woods Stevenson," I said, then suddenly ran forward to pump his
hand vigorously. Jason Woods Stevenson! If he liked it here at Venus on
the Half Shell, Harry and I had it made. Because Jason Woods Stevenson
was the outdoor editor of Spaceman's magazine--and Sportsmen all over
the solar system waited breathlessly each month for him to pontificate
on some new out-of-the-way sportsman's paradise. If he passed on Venus
on the Half Shell, we'd be swamped with business.
"Don't see any native trackers around," Jason W. Stevenson said after
shaking my hand with a grip that almost broke the finger bones. "Have
them outside?"
"Well, the truth is--" I said.
"Is what?"
"The trackers went back to their tribe."
"Went back? What about your hunters? Are you boys the hunters too?"
I couldn't tell him about Talbot Kramer walking out on us. If I told
him that, I knew he would climb right back into his sportster and head
on to Venus Joe's. Venus Joe's which had started with fifty times the
capital Harry and I had had, was doing well enough. But if Spaceman's
magazine gave them a plug and said nothing about us, we really were
through. I knew it and Harry coming back from the tent platform knew it
and we didn't have to say it out loud.
"Yes," I told Mr. Stevenson. "We're the guides too."
"Experienced?"
"We know Venus as well as anyone," I said, which wasn't exactly a lie
since no one, not even the Extra-terrestrial geographic Survey, had
been able to draw an accurate map of Venus yet.
* * * * *
Mr. Stevenson seemed very doubtful. "Well, boys, I don't know. No hard
feelings, you understand. If I was alone it might be different. But my
daughter's here. She's not exactly a delicate item now, boys, but she's
no big-game hunter, either. If it was a cabin instead of a tent and if
you had bearers and trackers--"
"You can have our cabin!" Harry cried desperately.
"Well, I don't know, boys."
I gave Harry one of those desperate stares. Harry returned it to me,
saying without words that he had no further ideas either. I could see
our last chance--a favorable write-up in Spaceman's magazine--going up
in smoke. Mr. Stevenson started back toward his sportster and said,
"I'll say I stopped here on the way to Venus Joe's, boys. I'll say the
place looked--ah, primitive. How's that? Primitive, I'll say. For real
outdoorsmen."
"Damning with faint praise," Harry whispered to me fiercely. "Gil,
you've got to do something."
I nodded. My head was suddenly as empty of ideas as the space
between galaxies is empty of stars. I followed Mr. Stevenson back
to the sportster and watched him boost himself up toward the hatch
athletically and lower his two-hundred pounds in with the grace of a
cat. When his head had disappeared but before the hatch banged shut I
said:
"Wompan."