The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol Vii Part 18

"I know what it'll take," the Captain roared. "Don't tell me my job! Put every available man on this, I want that guy brought in."

The old man walked back to his room. He was carrying a dozen cans of beer, but the load was light and he walked upright. He felt fine, like a million dollars. And he was beginning to remember.

When he entered the room he saw the knife and when he saw the knife he smiled. A man had to be smart and a man had to be prepared. They were smart ... wicked and smart ... but he was smarter. He'd bought the knife a long, long time ago, in a different world--they couldn't fool him that way. They were clever all right, they fooled the whole world.

He put his beer on the bureau, then walked into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. He came back out and started to undress. He was humming to himself. When he finished undressing he went over to the bureau and opened a can of beer. He carried it into the bathroom, put it beside the tub, and lowered himself into the water.

Ah ... that was the ticket. Water and being clean. Clean and being water. Being water and being candy and being smart. They fooled the whole world, but not him. The whole, wide world, but they couldn't fool him. He was going to fool them. All pretty and innocent. Hah! Innocent! He knew. They were rotten, they were rotten all the way through. They fooled the whole world but they were rotten ... rotten ... and he was the only one who knew.

He finished the beer and stood up in the tub. The water ran off his body in greasy runlets. He didn't pull the plug. He stepped out of the tub and over to the bathroom mirror. His face looked fine, not puffy at all. He'd fool them. He sprinkled himself with lilac water, put the bottle to his lips, and swished some of it in his mouth. Oh yes, he'd fool them. A man couldn't be too clever, they were clever, so he had to be clever. He began to shave.

The Captain was on an audio circuit, talking to an a.s.sistant Commissioner. "Yes, Sir, I know that--Yes, Sir, it could be, but it might be something else--Yes, Sir, I know Squirrel Hill has problems, but we need help--Yes, Commissioner, it's over ninety now (The Captain signaled wildly to Matesic; Matesic held up four fingers, then two) 94.2 and still going up--No, Sir, we don't know. Some guy gonna quit his job ... or kill his boss. Maybe he found out his wife is cheating on him. We can't tell until we pick him up--Yes, Sir--Yes, Sir--Thank you, Sir."

The Captain hung up. "I hate politicians," he snarled.

"Watch it, Captain," said Matesic, "I'll get you on my board."

"Get me on it, h.e.l.l," the Captain said, "I've never been off."

The old man finished dressing. He knotted his tie and brushed off the front of his suit with his hand. He looked fine. He'd fool them, he looked just like anybody else. He crossed to the bureau and picked up the knife. It was still in the scabbard. He didn't take it out, he just put it in his pocket. Good. It didn't show.

He walked out on the street. The sun was shining brightly and heat waves were coming up from the sidewalk. Good. Good. This was the best time. People, the real people, would be working or lying down asleep. But they'd be out. They were always out. Out all sweet and innocent in the hot sun.

He turned down the street and ambled toward the drug store. He didn't want to hurry. He had lots of time. He had to get some candy first. That was the ticket, candy. Candy worked, candy always worked. Candy was good but candy was wicked. He was good but they were wicked. Oh, you had to be smart.

"That has to be him," Matesic said. The screen was blotched and milky, but a large splash of light in the lower left hand corner outshone everything else. "He's somewhere around Negley Avenue." He turned to the Captain. "Where do you have your men placed?"

"In a box," the Captain said. "Fifth and Negley, Aiken and Negley, Center and Aiken, and Center and Negley. And three scout cars overhead."

The old man walked up Ellsworth to the Liberty School. There were always lots of young ones around Liberty School. The young ones were the worst.

"I'm losing him."

"Where are you?"

"Center and Aiken."

"Anybody getting him stronger?"

"Yeah. Me. Negley and Fifth."

"Never mind. Never mind, we got him. We see him now."

"Where?"

"Bellefonte and Ivy. Liberty School."

She was a friendly little thing, and pretty. Maybe five, maybe six, and her Mommy had told her not to talk to strangers. But the funny old man wasn't talking, he was sitting on the curb, and he was eating candy, and he was offering some to her. He smiled at the little girl and she smiled back.

The scout car settled to earth on automatic. Two officers climbed out of the car and walked quietly over to the old man, one on either side. They each took an arm and lifted him gently to his feet.

"h.e.l.lo there, Old Timer."

"Hi, little girl."

The old man looked around bewildered. He dropped his candy and tried to reach his knife. They mustn't interfere. It was no use. The officers were very kind and gentle, and they were very, very firm. They led him off as though he were an old, old friend.

One of the officers called back over his shoulder, "Bye, bye, little girl."

The little girl dutifully waved 'bye.

She looked at the paper sack on the sidewalk. She didn't know what to do, but the nice old man was gone. She looked around, but no one was paying any attention, they were all watching the softball game. Suddenly she made a grab and clutched the paper bag to her body. Then she turned and ran back up the street to tell her Mommy how wonderful, wonderful lucky she was.

WIND.

By CHARLES L. FONTENAY

When you have an engine with no fuel, and fuel without an engine, and a life-and-death deadline to meet, you have a problem indeed. Unless you are a stubborn Dutchman--and Jan Van Artevelde was the stubbornest Dutchman on Venus.

Jan Willem van Artevelde claimed descent from William of Orange. He had no genealogy to prove it, but on Venus there was no one who could disprove it, either.

Jan Willem van Artevelde smoked a clay pipe, which only a Dutchman can do properly, because the clay bit grates on less stubborn teeth.

Jan needed all his Dutch stubbornness, and a good deal of pure physical strength besides, to maneuver the roach-flat groundcar across the tumbled terrain of Den Hoorn into the teeth of the howling gale that swept from the west. The huge wheels twisted and jolted against the rocks outside, and Jan bounced against his seat belt, wrestled the steering wheel and puffed at his pijp. The mild aroma of Heerenbaai-Tabak filled the airtight groundcar.

There came a new swaying that was not the roughness of the terrain. Through the thick windshield Jan saw all the ground about him buckle and heave for a second or two before it settled to rugged quiescence again. This time he was really heaved about.

Jan mentioned this to the groundcar radio.

"That's the third time in half an hour," he commented. "The place tosses like the IJsselmeer on a rough day."

"You just don't forget it isn't the Zuider Zee," retorted Heemskerk from the other end. "You sink there and you don't come up three times."

"Don't worry," said Jan. "I'll be back on time, with a broom at the masthead."

"This I shall want to see," chuckled Heemskerk; a logical reaction, considering the scarcity of brooms on Venus.

Two hours earlier the two men had sat across a small table playing chess, with little indication there would be anything else to occupy their time before blastoff of the stubby gravity-boat. It would be their last chess game for many months, for Jan was a member of the Dutch colony at Oostpoort in the northern hemisphere of Venus, while Heemskerk was pilot of the G-boat from the Dutch s.p.a.ceship Vanderdecken, scheduled to begin an Earthward orbit in a few hours.

It was near the dusk of the 485-hour Venerian day, and the Twilight Gale already had arisen, sweeping from the comparatively chill Venerian nightside into the superheated dayside. Oostpoort, established near some outcroppings that contained uranium ore, was protected from both the Dawn Gale and the Twilight Gale, for it was in a valley in the midst of a small range of mountains.

Jan had just figured out a combination by which he hoped to cheat Heemskerk out of one of his knights, when Dekker, the burgemeester of Oostpoort, entered the s.p.a.ceport ready room.

"There's been an emergency radio message," said Dekker. "They've got a pa.s.senger for the Earthship over at Rathole."

"Rathole?" repeated Heemskerk. "What's that? I didn't know there was another colony within two thousand kilometers."

"It isn't a colony, in the sense Oostpoort is," explained Dekker. "The people are the families of a bunch of laborers left behind when the colony folded several years ago. It's about eighty kilometers away, right across the Hoorn, but they don't have any vehicles that can navigate when the wind's up."

Heemskerk pushed his short-billed cap back on his close-cropped head, leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his comfortable stomach.

"Then the pa.s.senger will have to wait for the next ship," he p.r.o.nounced. "The Vanderdecken has to blast off in thirty hours to catch Earth at the right orbital spot, and the G-boat has to blast off in ten hours to catch the Vanderdecken."

"This pa.s.senger can't wait," said Dekker. "He needs to be evacuated to Earth immediately. He's suffering from the Venus Shadow."

Jan whistled softly. He had seen the effects of that disease. Dekker was right.

"Jan, you're the best driver in Oostpoort," said Dekker. "You will have to take a groundcar to Rathole and bring the fellow back."

So now Jan gripped his clay pipe between his teeth and piloted the groundcar into the teeth of the Twilight Gale.

Den Hoorn was a comparatively flat desert sweep that ran along the western side of the Oost Mountains, just over the mountain from Oostpoort. It was a thin fault area of a planet whose crust was peculiarly subject to earthquakes, particularly at the beginning and end of each long day when temperatures of the surface rocks changed. On the other side of it lay Rathole, a little settlement that eked a precarious living from the Venerian vegetation. Jan never had seen it.

He had little difficulty driving up and over the mountain, for the Dutch settlers had carved a rough road through the ravines. But even the 2-1/2-meter wheels of the groundcar had trouble amid the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn. The wind hit the car in full strength here and, though the body of the groundcar was suspended from the axles, there was constant danger of its being flipped over by a gust if not handled just right.

The three earthshocks that had shaken Den Hoorn since he had been driving made his task no easier, but he was obviously lucky, at that. Often he had to detour far from his course to skirt long, deep cracks in the surface, or steep breaks where the crust had been raised or dropped several meters by past quakes.

The groundcar zig-zagged slowly westward. The tattered violet-and-indigo clouds boiled low above it, but the wind was as dry as the breath of an oven. Despite the heavy cloud cover, the afternoon was as bright as an Earth-day. The thermometer showed the outside temperature to have dropped to 40 degrees Centigrade in the west wind, and it was still going down.

Jan reached the edge of a crack that made further progress seem impossible. A hundred meters wide, of unknown depth, it stretched out of sight in both directions. For the first time he entertained serious doubts that Den Hoorn could be crossed by land.

After a moment's hesitation, he swung the groundcar northward and raced along the edge of the chasm as fast as the car would negotiate the terrain. He looked anxiously at his watch. Nearly three hours had pa.s.sed since he left Oostpoort. He had seven hours to go and he was still at least 16 kilometers from Rathole. His pipe was out, but he could not take his hands from the wheel to refill it.

He had driven at least eight kilometers before he realized that the crack was narrowing. At least as far again, the two edges came together, but not at the same level. A sheer cliff three meters high now barred his pa.s.sage. He drove on.

Apparently it was the result of an old quake. He found a spot where rocks had tumbled down, making a steep, rough ramp up the break. He drove up it and turned back southwestward.

He made it just in time. He had driven less than three hundred meters when a quake more severe than any of the others struck. Suddenly behind him the break reversed itself, so that where he had climbed up coming westward he would now have to climb a cliff of equal height returning eastward.

The ground heaved and buckled like a tempestuous sea. Rocks rolled and leaped through the air, several large ones striking the groundcar with ominous force. The car staggered forward on its giant wheels like a drunken man. The quake was so violent that at one time the vehicle was hurled several meters sideways, and almost overturned. And the wind smashed down on it unrelentingly.

The quake lasted for several minutes, during which Jan was able to make no progress at all and struggled only to keep the groundcar upright. Then, in unison, both earthquake and wind died to absolute quiescence.

Jan made use of this calm to step down on the accelerator and send the groundcar speeding forward. The terrain was easier here, nearing the western edge of Den Hoorn, and he covered several kilometers before the wind struck again, cutting his speed down considerably. He judged he must be nearing Rathole.

Not long thereafter, he rounded an outcropping of rock and it lay before him.

A wave of nostalgia swept over him. Back at Oostpoort, the power was nuclear, but this little settlement made use of the cheapest, most obviously available power source. It was dotted with more than a dozen windmills.

Windmills! Tears came to Jan's eyes. For a moment, he was carried back to the flat lands around 's Gravenhage. For a moment he was a tow-headed, round-eyed boy again, clumping in wooden shoes along the edge of the tulip fields.

But there were no ca.n.a.ls here. The flat land, stretching into the darkening west, was spotted with patches of cactus and leather-leaved Venerian plants. Amid the windmills, low domes protruded from the earth, indicating that the dwellings of Rathole were, appropriately, partly underground.

He drove into the place. There were no streets, as such, but there were avenues between lines of heavy chains strung to short iron posts, evidently as handholds against the wind. The savage gale piled dust and sand in drifts against the domes, then, shifting slightly, swept them clean again.

There was no one moving abroad, but just inside the community Jan found half a dozen men in a group, clinging to one of the chains and waving to him. He pulled the groundcar to a stop beside them, stuck his pipe in a pocket of his plastic venusuit, donned his helmet and got out.

The wind almost took him away before one of them grabbed him and he was able to grasp the chain himself. They gathered around him. They were swarthy, black-eyed men, with curly hair. One of them grasped his hand.

"Bienvenido, senor," said the man.

Jan recoiled and dropped the man's hand. All the Orangeman blood he claimed protested in outrage.

Spaniards! All these men were Spaniards!

Jan recovered himself at once. He had been reading too much ancient history during his leisure hours. The hot monotony of Venus was beginning to affect his brain. It had been 500 years since the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule. A lot of water over the dam since then.

A look at the men around him, the sound of their chatter, convinced him that he need not try German or Hollandsch here. He fell back on the international language.