The little man smiled unpleasantly. "Mud and moss," he said.
Shoemaker wanted to yell. Holding a conversation with a hunk of mist, a
non-existent goblin! He hardly recognized his own voice when he said,
"What do you want?"
The green man walked toward him. "Heaved out my Scotch," he said, and
leered.
Shoemaker did yell. Leaping to his feet, flinging his arms wide, he
bellowed like a wounded carabao. The bottle slipped out of his fingers
and looped gracefully into the sea. The goblin turned his head to
follow it.
Then, astonishingly, he looked at Shoemaker, said, "It'll come back,"
and dived in after the bottle.
Neither of them came up, though Shoemaker hung onto the frame of the
sallyport and watched for half an hour.
* * * * *
Shoemaker heard their voices through the hull when they came back that
night.
"Where's the old soak?" That was Burford.
"Now, Charley, that isn't nice. He didn't say anything, but you
could tell he wasn't feeling so good when he found out you'd located
his cache. I dunno's we should of done that. He's sure to get real
uncooperative on us, and we need him."
"All right!" said Burford. "But have you noticed how shaky he's been
the last couple of days? What if he cracks up, then where'll we be? I
say it isn't enough to just throw out his liquor--he'll make more as
soon as we get into space again. We ought to make him take the cure.
Force it down his throat if we have to."
"Sure," said Hale. "Just tell him we're through kidding around. He's
got to take it and like it."
"Now, boys, take it easy," Davies said. "We've been all over this
before...."
Shoemaker grinned sourly. So that was what they were cooking up.
Well, forewarned was forearmed; as a matter of fact, he'd given this
possibility some thought a long time ago, and acted accordingly. So he
had one hole card, anyway. But getting them to agree to an immediate
takeoff was another horse.
Wait a minute.... There was an idea. If he played it right--it was
tricky, but it might work.
They were coming in the sallyport now. Shoemaker ducked down to the
chem storeroom, found the bottle he was looking for and filled a small
capsule from it. His hands were shaking, he noticed. That was what the
fear of hellfire did to you.
Shoemaker had reached a decision. Delirium tremens wasn't a good enough
answer; it didn't fit. If he thought it was that, he'd gladly take the
cure, even though the idea made his belly crawl. Of course, it was too
late for that, anyway--he'd thrown out the drug in Burford's sick-box
and substituted plain baking soda long ago.
But Shoemaker thought he knew what was happening to him, and it wasn't
d. t.'s. It wasn't the usual dipso's collection of crazy daymares at
all; there was a horrid kind of logic to it. Instead of delirium, it
was--judgment.
That was as far as he'd gone. He knew he had it coming to him, and
now he thought he was going to get it. But he hadn't given up yet.
There was one thing he could still do, and that was to run--get clear
away from this damned planet. After that, he'd just have to take his
chances. Maybe the things could follow him into space, maybe not.
Shoemaker wasn't sure of anything any more.
He slipped the capsule into his pocket where he could get at it when he
needed it, and went on up the passageway.
"Oh, there you are," said Burford. "We were wondering where you'd got
to."
Shoemaker glared at him. "Okay, go ahead, ask me if I was digging for a
microspectrograph mine."
Burford looked shocked. "Why, Jim, you know I wouldn't say a nasty
thing like that." He took Shoemaker's arm. "Come on up to the galley.
We're having a pow-wow."
Oh-oh, thought Shoemaker. This looks like it. He put his hand in his
pocket and folded his handkerchief over the capsule.
Davies and Hale stared at him solemnly as he came through the door with
Burford behind him. He looked back at them, poker-faced, and sat down.
Davies cleared his throat. "Er-um. Jim, we've been worried about you
lately. You don't act like you're feeling too chipper."
"That's right," said Shoemaker, looking doleful. "I've been thinking
about my poor old mother."