He was unnecessary. The first two had already
convinced Shoemaker there was only one cure for
his condition--and that was to get the hell away
from space-ships and onto a nice red wagon.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Shoemaker sat in the open sallyport of the ship and looked gloomily
at a pale blue-green seascape, parted down the middle by a ghostly
shoreline. The sea was a little greener, and the land was a little
bluer; otherwise there was no difference to the eye. Once in a while
a tiny breeze came in from the sea, and then the stink changed from
sulphur to fish.
Venus, he decided, was a pest-hole. If he'd known it would be like
this, he would have socked old Davies in the eye when he came to
him with his damned plans. And then he'd have got roaring drunk to
celebrate his escape.
Drunk.... Boy, he'd been squiffed last night! And every night, except
one horrible period when they'd found his cache and it had been three
days before he could shut off the engines and make more. Thinking of
that, he shuddered. Better get started early tonight; no telling when
the others would be back.
He rose and went back into the stifling heat of the ship. No cooling
system in the thing; that's one item he hadn't thought of. But then, to
hear Davies and Burford talk, Venus was going to be a kind of Turkish
paradise, full of pomegranates and loose women. Nothing had been said
about the temperature or the smells.
He walked down the narrow passageway to the hold, entered one of the
compartments, and stopped before a patched section of the bulkhead.
The ship was practically nothing _but_ patches, and this looked no
different from the rest. But it was.
Shoemaker stuck a fingernail under the lower end of the metal strip,
and pulled. The strip came loose. He got his finger all the way under
and lifted. The soldered edges tore away like so much glue.
He caught the section as the top came away, and laid it aside. Behind
it, in a space where plastic filler had been removed, were stacked
bottles of a colorless liquid. He took one of them out and shoved it
into his back pocket. Then he picked up the patch sheet and, holding it
in place with one hand, took a metal-foil tube out of his pocket with
the other. The gunk in the tube was his own discovery; a phony solder
fluid that was pretty nearly as strong as the real thing, except that
the slightest leverage would pull it loose. He smeared a thin film of
the stuff all around the patch, held the sheet for a few seconds more
while it dried, then stood off to examine his work. Perfect.
The bottle in his pocket was uncomfortably warm against his thin rump.
Well, he could fix that, too. He went down the passage to the next
compartment, jockeyed an oxygen tank around until he could get at the
petcock, and held the bottle in a thin stream of the compressed gas. In
a minute the liquor was chilled.
He was sweating prodigiously. Gasping a little, he went back to the
sallyport and sat down. He settled his broad back against the doorway,
put the neck of the bottle against his pursed lips, and drank.
He was lowering his head after the fifth long swallow, when he saw
something move against the misty boundary of sea and land. He followed
it with his eyes. His long "Ahhh" of satisfaction ended in the sound of
a man treacherously struck in the belly.
* * * * *
A little green man was standing there, a little poisonous-green man
with blue-green whiskers and eyes like emeralds. He was about fourteen
inches high, counting his big rabbit ears. He had an ominous look on
his face.
Shoemaker gaped. Suddenly, the things Burford had been telling him,
this morning before he and the other two had left to go exploring,
began to run through his mind. _Flesh and blood can stand just so much,
Jim. One of these days a pink elephant or a polka-dot giraffe is going
to step out of a bottle and say to you_--
"Shoemaker, your time has come."
He jumped a foot. He was quivering all over.
Just as Shoemaker was telling himself that it couldn't possibly have
happened, the little man moved a step forward and said it again.
Shoemaker dived for the door and slammed it after him. Ten minutes
later, when he stopped shaking long enough to open it again, the little
green man was gone.
This was not so good, Shoemaker told himself. Whether it was the d.
t.'s or just a hallucination brought on by chilled liquor in a hot
climate, that green man was nothing he wanted to have around.
He started thinking about what Burford and Davies and Hale would do if
they found out he'd started seeing things. They'd taken a lot from him,
because he was the only man who could hold the _Space Queen_ together;
but this might be too much.
For instance, there was his habit of stopping the engines whenever he
ran out of liquor. Well, he had an alibi for that, anyway. Two days
out of New York, they'd found his supply of Scotch and dumped it into
space. Fighting mad, he'd waited until the others were asleep, then
disconnected the transmutator that fed the rocket motors and adjusted
it to turn out pure grain alcohol. With the addition of a little
grapefruit juice from the stores, it made a fair-to-middling tipple.
He'd kept going on it ever since.
But, if there were green men in it....
Shuddering, he went outside to wait for Davies and the other two. It
was a little cooler now, with the sun clear around on the other side
of the planet, but it was also a lot darker. Shoemaker turned on the
light in the sallyport and stood under it, nervously peering into the
blackness.
* * * * *
Presently he heard a hail, and then saw the three lights coming
toward him. Three of them; that meant nobody had been devoured by
saber-toothed pipicacas, or whatever cockeyed carnivores there were on
this Turkish bath of a world. That was good. If anybody killed any of
them--big, slow-thinking Davies, the chubby, drawling Hale--or Burford
in particular--Shoemaker wanted it to be him.