Ole Doc Methuselah Part 12

News was spreading. More and more people came until Ole Doc saw the entrance doors bulging. The corridors and courtyards were full. Rumors were flying from city to town, from planet to planet through the system.

Then Ole Doc stood the youth before him. Dressed, shaven, healthy, Rudolf bore little resemblance to the dying man in the hole a few hours before.

Rudolf would have had vast explanations.

But Ole Doc was terse, "You are going to take that throne in about five minutes and you are never going to mention a word of the last six orbits to your mother. I must have your word on that.

"You are going to retire her to a villa and keep her in luxury. Do I have your word?"

"Yes. Of course. But I-"

"You see that he does keep it," said Ole Doc to Ayilt.

"Never fear. We'll do whatever you say. To think that only a few short hours ago Rudolf was dying-Truly, you must be an angel."

"Others think very differently, I fear," said Ole Doc with a grin. "Charge it up to the Soldiers of Light, the Universal Medical Society. And never breathe a word of how I've taken a hand in politics here. Now, any ques- tions?"

They looked at him numbly but there was life and hope in them once more. "We have inherited a terrible job, but we'll do it," said Rudolf, pumping Ole Doc's hand.

Ole Doc had to restrain Ayilt from kneeling to him.

Brusquely he placed the two of them on the old restored thrones and led Pauma out from the curtains which were now destroyed.

Pauma stood looking obediently at Ole Doc until, after a few swift words, he broke the spell.

It was their show then. King and queen on their thrones nodded graciously to the queen mother at her greeting but before they could speak more than a few words the great doors burst inwards and the place was flooded with people, commoners, burghers, soldiers come to know where they stood, and their mouths were full of fled gar- risons and a populace burst from the bonds of slavery.

They didn't notice Ole Doc. He glanced at the old queen. She, too, had been thrust back but she was preen- ing herself before a mirror, coquettishly turning her head this way and that to admire herself.

Shortly afterwards, in a commandeered sled Ole Doc arrived at the supply sheds of the hangars. The place was deserted. Two guards were dead and shackles were scat- tered about, broken. But the supplies were all in order and Ole Doc carefully selected a small two-billion-foot thrust pile, pocketing it.

The light seemed brighter as he walked back to the field. Then it was clear why, for the dark star had been quarter covering the bright one on his arrival and had now spun clear.

The trees around the field were free of any burden but green leaves, and the old Morgue gleamed golden in the pleasant expanse.

A moment after, Ole Doc stepped aboard.

Hippocrates was waiting peevishly. The little creature threw down the tome on stellar radiations he had been reading and began to shrilly berate his master for having taken so long.

"One would think piles were hard to get!" he com- plained.

"This one," said Ole Doc, "was."

"Let's see it," said Hippocrates, not believing.

Ole Doc showed him and the little fellow was all smiles.

He bounced below to install it, singing the ribald "Fiddler of Saphi" as he went.

Shortly after the Morgue was leaping out toward the hub and all was peace aboard her.

The pile was working perfectly.

The Expensive Slaves

George Jasper Arlington fancied himself as an empire builder. He had gone up to Mizar in Ursa Major when he was ten and simply by the dint of sheer survival had risen to grandeur on Dorab of that system. His huge bulk defied Dorab's iciness and his inexhaustible energy overrode the cold paralysed government. It might have been said that George Jasper Arlington was Dorab, for nothing moved there unless his s.h.a.ggy head gave the jerk.

He had overcome the chief obstacle of the place, which made for riches. In the early days of the second millennium of s.p.a.ce travel, when mankind was but spa.r.s.ely settling the habitable worlds, land was worth nothing-there was too much of it. But it is an economic principle that when land is to be had for little then there are but few men to work it and wealth begins to consist not of vast t.i.tlings of soil but numbers of men to work it. Inevitably, when man not earth is the scarcity, capital invests itself in human beings and slavery, regardless of the number of laws which may be pa.s.sed against it, is practised everywhere.

But George Jasper Arlington, thunderous lord of Dor- ab, had evolved two answers and so he had become rich.

The first of these was the simple transportation plan whereby people in "less advantageous" areas were given transport to and land on Dorab in return for seven years labour for George Jasper Arlington. He had created a s.p.a.ce fleet of some size and he could afford this. But sooner or later it was certain to be discovered that the man who could live on Dorab seven years as a laborer had not been born and so there came a time when recruits for his project answered not the lurid advertis.e.m.e.nts of George Jasper Arlington. Indeed in some systems, they threw filth at the posters.

But none of this was the business of the Universal Medical Society, for man, it seemed, would be man, and

big fleas ate smaller ones inevitably. It was the second method which brought the Soldiers of Light down upon the magnificent G. J. Arlington, in the form of one of their renowned members, Ole Doc Methuselah.

Located here and there throughout s.p.a.ce were worlds which held no converse with man. Because of metabolism, atmosphere, gravity and such many thousands of "peo- ples" were utterly isolated and unapproachable. Further, they did not want to be approached for what possible society could they have formed with a carbon one g being? Man now and then explored such worlds in highly insulated ships and suits, beheld the weird beings, gaped at the hitherto unknown physiological facts and then got out rapidly. For a two-foot "man", for instance, who ate pumice and weighed two tons-Earth-had about as much in common with a human being as a robot with a cat. And so such worlds were always left alone. And therein lay the genius of George Jasper Arlington, lordly in his empire on Dorab.

He had sent out expeditions to surrounding systems, had searched and sifted evidence and had at last discovered the people of Sirius Sixty-eight. These he had investigated, sampled, a.n.a.lysed and finally fought and captured. He had brought nine hundred of them to Dorab to labour in the wastes-and then the employees, the overseers, of George Jasper Arlington had begun to sicken and die. He reacted violently.

Ole Doc Methuselah, outward bound in the Morgue on important affairs, received the Medical Centre flash.

IF CONVENIENT YOU MIGHT LOOK IN ON.

DORAB-MIZAR WHERE UNKNOWN DISEASE.

DECIMATES PLANET. DR. HOLDEN WON IN-.

TERGALACTIC TAMBERLANE CHESS CHAM-.

PIONSHIP. MISS ROGERS WOULD LIKE A.

FLASK OF MIZAR MUSK IF YOU STOP. BEST.

FOLLINGSBY.

Ole Doc altered course and went back to the dining salon to eat dinner. The only controls he had there were the emergency turn, speed and stop b.u.t.tons, but recently the Morgue had been equipped with the Speary Automatic Navigator-Ole Doc had not trusted the thing for the first hundred and twenty years it had been out but had finally

let them put one in-and she now responded to the command, "Dorab-Mizar, capital" and went on her own way.

Hippocrates, his ageless slave, bounced happily about the salon, ducking into the galley for new dishes, quoting Boccacio, a very ancient author, phonograph-record-wise.

When he had served the main course on a diamond set platter of pure gold and when he saw that his beloved Ole Doc was giving the wild goose all the attention it deserved, the weird little creature began to chant yet another tale, "Rappachini's Daughter" wherein an aged medic, to revenge himself upon a rival, fills up his own daughter on poison to which he immunizes her and then sets her in the road of his rival's son who, of course, is far from proof against the virulence of the lovely lady.

Although the yarn had lain quietly amongst his books- which library Hippocrates steadily devoured-Ole Doc had not heard of it for two or three hundred years. He thought now of all the advantages he had over that ancient Italian writer. Why he knew of a thousand ways at least to make a being sudden death to any other being.

Maybe, he mused over dessert, it was just as well that people didn't dig into literature any more but contented themselves on sparadio thrillers and washboard weepers.

From all the vengeance, provincialism, wars and govern- ments he had seen of late, such devices could well depopu- late the galaxies.

But his thoughts paused at the speaker announcement:

"We are safely landed at Dorab-Mizar, capital Nanty, main s.p.a.ce field, conditions good but subartic cold." That was the Morgue talking. Ole Doc could not quite get used to his trusty old s.p.a.ce can having a dulcet voice.

Hippocrates got him into a lead fibre suit and put a helmet on his head and armed him with kit and blasters and then stood back to admire him and, at the same time, check him out. Hippocrates was small, four-armed and awful to behold, but where Ole Doc was concerned, the little creature was life itself.

Ole Doc stepped through the s.p.a.ceport and stopped.