"Are they particularly fast?"
"No, of course not. But--"
"Are they dangerous?"
He grinned, but he was still puzzled. "I'd say they were about the
least dangerous animal I ever heard of. But, Nap--"
"Just one more question, Jerry, I'm in a hurry. Do you think I could
catch one?"
"I can't think of anything you could catch easier." He started to give
one of his short bursts of laughter. "But--"
"Thanks, Jerry," I told him. "See you later." I snapped off the set and
turned back to Westley Marks.
"All right, answer just one question and I'll take up that bet of
yours. What's secret about this?"
"If I tell you, you'll take on the job?"
"The job, _and_ the thousand credit bet," I grated.
"Very well. It is suspected that the zloor is an alien life form."
I stared at him. "Are you around the corner?" I demanded. "Of course
it's an alien life form. Didn't you just say it's a Martian animal?"
"Ummmm. But some authorities think it is alien to this solar system.
At least they suspect so--that's why the government wants a specimen
to dissect and thoroughly investigate. They haven't the facilities on
Mars, of course, so it will be necessary to bring one back here."
I still stared at him. "Alien to the solar system? Your roof _must_ be
leaking. How would it get here?" A sudden suspicion hit me. "You mean
it's intelligent? I thought there wasn't any intelligent life forms on
Mars."
He shook his head. "It's a stupid herbivorous animal." He shot a glance
down at his watch. "The shuttle for the space station leaves in three
hours. Can you make it?"
I glared at him. "You give me plenty of time, don't you?--I'll make it
all right. But first I want this bet down in writing."
"Of course," he said smoothly.
* * * * *
I had to hustle plenty. The zloor wasn't any bigger than a rabbit, and
I knew that life forms on Mars were in general small, so I took nothing
larger than my little carbine size .22 Hornet, another gun that Westley
Marks probably would have sneered at but which I wouldn't have traded
for all the automatics you could shake a stick at.
I didn't take much else; no clothes except the shorts I wore when I
climbed into the shuttle rocket for the space station. When Marks said
freight rates in space were high he just wasn't whistling, _Terra
Forever_. I could buy clothes and any other equipment I needed a good
deal cheaper on Mars than the cost of transporting them there would
come to.
For one thing, when anybody left the colony planet to come back to
Terra, they invariably left behind everything in the way of clothing
and personal equipment; for another, a certain amount of these things
were being manufactured on Mars from native raw materials in an attempt
to escape the murderous space rates.
After the four G's acceleration had cut off and we were in free fall,
I took the opportunity to read the contract I'd hurriedly signed with
Westley Marks. On thorough reading, the contract didn't seem _too_ bad.
All my expenses to and from Mars were paid by Marks. I also got five
credits a month in the way of salary--no fortune, but average pay for a
Terran worker. If I caught a zloor and brought it back alive, I got a
five hundred credit bonus; if I brought two back alive, a seven hundred
credit bonus. If I brought a dead one back, I got a three hundred
bonus. Westley Marks didn't seem to be interested in getting more than
one dead one since there wasn't any provision for a larger number.
He'd given me to understand that this job was for the government, but
from the way the contract read I was working for the Marks Enterprises.
That irritated me for a minute or so, but I finally shrugged it off.
He probably had a government contract to secure one of the things. I
still couldn't figure out what his angle was--but I knew there must be
one; too much money was involved to make this a routine assignment such
as I usually work on for the zoos. Evidently Marks ran some sort of an
expediting outfit which took on off-trail contracts.
At this point I might do a little in the way of describing my trip
to the space station which circles Terra and is used as a take-off
point to Luna and the planets. I might go on and tell of my journey
from there to the space station in orbit about Mars, and then, further
still, of my shuttling down to Fort Mars and my first impressions of
landing there, of the one-sixth gravity, the thin air, the plastic dome
which covers the whole little city. But the trouble is that a hundred
people a lot quicker with a dicto-typer than I am have already done the
job. I'll just leave that part of it and take up with my first contact
with my fellow Terrans on Mars.
One of the old gags is to the effect that when Greek meets Greek they
start a restaurant. Okay, maybe, but I do know this, that when man in
general starts up a new colony one of the first buildings he puts up is
a bar.
At any rate, as soon as I was settled at the Biltless Hotel--the name,
of course, is a gag, but the place lived up to it--I made my way to
Sam's.
* * * * *
Now, there's something that invariably happens to people who get
around. It's happened to you, if you're one of us. Maybe you're walking
through the Congo Game Preserve, figuring there isn't another man,
white or otherwise, within a hundred kilometers. Suddenly you run into
another party and somebody yells, "Hello Nap! What in kert are you
doing here?" The last time you saw him was in San Francisco. Or maybe
you're doing some solitary drinking in some obscure bar in Guatemala.
The guy next to you looks over and says, "Say, aren't you Nap Prescott,
the brother of--" and, of course, you are.
Well, that was it. I hadn't any more got up to the bar and told Sam,
"Let me have some of this Martian _woji_ I've been hearing so much
about," when I heard somebody yelp, "It's Nap! I'll be a grinning
_makron_ if it isn't Nap!"
I turned around and there was Mike Holiday, as big as life and twice as
drunk.
He waddled his bulk over to me--Mike always waddles when he's
soused--from the table where he'd been sitting.
"By the Holy Jumping Wodo," he crowed, "I'll bet my left arm you came
to get a zloor."
I'd been grinning and holding out my hand to clasp his, but that
stiffened me.
He saw it and began to laugh uproariously. "Another joiner of the
club!" he yelped. "Come on over and meet your fellow members. You got
one of them Westley contracts too?"
That did it.
I went over and met the boys. Mike Holiday wasn't the only acquaintance
of mine in Fort Mars. In fact, it was like a convention of the
outstanding professional hunters of Earth.
They all shouted their greetings, some of them laughing so hard tears
rolled down their cheeks. Evidently they got a big kick every time a
newcomer was added to their ranks. I shook hands with some, but most
were too hilarious to go through the ceremony.
Blackie Conover yelled, "I'll bet anybody two to one he brought a .22
Hornet to shoot himself a zloor. Two to one!"
"Do we look like suckers?" Mike yelled back at him.
I sank into a chair and took it for awhile. "I can wait," I growled at
them. "Sooner or later somebody'll get around to telling me what goes
on."
"He can wait, he says," Doughbelly fairly yelped in delight. "Brother,
he ain't just a whistlin' _Terra Forever_, he can wait! Bring on the
woji! Start the initiation!"
* * * * *
I woke up in the morning in Mike Holiday's apartment. I groaned and
told myself that I was sworn off of woji for all time.--I didn't know
then that Terra-side liquor sold for ten credits a bottle.
Mike was grinning down at me. "You'll get used to woji," he said.
"I should live so long," I moaned. Then I sat up suddenly in the bed.
"You guys wouldn't tell me anything last night," I said. He was still
grinning. "That's part of the initiation into the Zloor Club. What'd'ya
want to know, Nap?"
I swung my feet over the side of the bed and came to a sitting
position. I groaned and shook my head in an attempt to clear it.
"What are half the professional hunters I know doing on Mars?"
He spun a chair around so that the back faced me, and straddled it, his
arms resting on the top rung. "Same thing you are, Nap. Being suckers
for that _makron_ Westley Marks."
I started to say something there but he interrupted me with a wave of
a hand. "This is what it boils down to. Marks has a contract with some
branch of the government to bring back one or more zloors. And don't
ask me why he doesn't go out and catch one himself--he's tried."
"He has, eh?"
"Yeah, he has. Had a whole crew up here. What makes it nice for him is
that he's on a cost plus basis. If he never succeeds, it'll still be
money in his pocket; if he does, he gets a whopping big bonus. Every
time he sends another man up here to take a crack at getting a zloor,
he makes money. No doubt the way he told _you_ the story, you'd think
you were the only one trying."
I snorted, "He told me I'd been picked because I was the smallest pro
hunter in the game."
Mike Holiday grinned. "He picked me because I was so big.--I could
stand the rigors of life on Mars, he said."
"Well, if it's a racket, why doesn't everybody go home on the next
ship?"
"Probably for the same reason you won't. That sharper made me so sore I
bet him five hundred credits I could catch a zloor."
"I bet him a thousand," I groaned.