Read Ebook: 4-1/2B Eros by Jameson Malcolm

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Ebook has 117 lines and 8244 words, and 3 pages

ian business man, not much over thirty, baldish, and plainly not given to foolishness. "I don't touch anything as a rule unless I see a profit in it. And no chance of loss. What is your collateral?"

Hank Karns mentioned his ship. The man snorted, and started to turn away. "You're wasting time."

"I got a ring, too. It's a--well--sorta heirloom."

The man came back. He was still not interested, but he took the ring Karns offered him and weighed it in his hand. Then he applied a loup to his eye and examined it closely.

"You've hocked this before?"

"Yes," chuckled Hank Karns. "And got it back, too."

"Hmmm," said the man. "It looks genuine. What do you want?"

"I--uh--am dropping into Mercury to do a little trading. When I get back I might want to buy a chair or so--mebbe a houseful of stuff--and just wanted to be sure my credit was good."

"You speak in riddles, my friend," said the man with a curious, tight little smile. He was tossing the ring thoughtfully all the while.

The man pocketed the ring.

"Where will the call come from?"

"I dunno. Space, mebbe. Jail, mebbe."

"My radio call is care assistant dockmaster, Venusberg sky-yard. Mention berth twenty-three somehow. As to the jail angle, I do not as a general thing do business with people in jail. In that event, I might send you a lawyer, in consideration of this ring. Tell Rashab, the night turn-key--you'll know him by the double scar on his chin--that you want to see Mr. Brown. I can't guarantee he'll go, but if he does, bear in mind he's a very cagy fellow and that Venusberg jail is studded with dictaphones and scanners. If what you have in mind smacks at all of illegality, it's likely he'll walk out on you."

"Yep," snapped Hank Karns, beginning to shut the clasps on his slicker, "I'll remember. Only I don't think it'll be a lawyer I'll need. If the joint is lousy with spy-machines, what I'll want is an old friend--a man of my type."

The man, whatever his name was, for he had still not given it, laughed outright for the first time. He slapped the Lone Trader on the back.

"Men of your type, you old humbug, are extinct as the horse."

Hank Karns looked up to laugh back at him, but he was gone. In his place stood the turbanned Venutian, still doing washing motions with his hands.

"Milord no like vickvare? Milord go now?"

"My Lord, yes. I go now."

Karns jammed on his sou'wester, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door. A half hour later he was making ready for the take-off for Mercury. It was a shot in the dark, but it was a chance he had to take.

"To hell with that," thought Hank Karns. Then briskly to the boy he had brought with him this trip as a general utility man, "Hey, Billy, look alive! Bear a hand with getting them there rakes stowed!"

"So that's Mercury," exclaimed Billy Hatch, four days later, as he stared goggle-eyed into the visiplate. This was his first interplanetary trip.

"Yep," said Karns, "That's her, the doggonedest planet barrin' none in the whole dad-frazzled system. After you've been here you can tell 'em you've seen wind blow, and I mean blow. That's what them rakes is for. To get around you lie down on your belly and pull yourself along by them. It's a helluva place. The sun on your back'd fry you, 'cepting there's always a ice-cold hurricane cooling you off."

"How can that be, cap'n?"

"Convection's the ten-sol word for it. It's cause she's sizzling hot on one side and colder'n the underside of a iceberg on t'other. The wind goes straight up over the desert and comes straight down over the back side glaciers. Then it scoots for the desert again--and how! Nobody could live an hour in any part of the place if it warn't for the temp'rate strip, and that's cockeyed enough. You gotta steady, hundred-two-hundred-mile wind going straight into the sun, for that's right down to the horizon. In the lee of a house you burn up, in the shade of it you'd freeze solid in five minutes. And the houses have to be stone and streamlined."

Hank Karns kept a watchful eye on the terrain coming up to meet them. Mooring a ship in that wind required the utmost art.

"As I told you, itsa helluva place. Nuthing grows there but a sort of grass and some moss. The only animals is varmints, like the cangrela and the trocklebeck. It's cangrela claws and trocklebeck hides we trade for."

Billy Hatch listened, wide-eyed. This was romance.

"The trocklebeck is a critter something on the order of a armadillo, only it's got horns and big claws to hang onto the ground. It grazes, with its head allus into the wind. The cangrela is built along the lines of a crab and has claws, too. It crawls up behind the trocklebeck and kills 'em while they're feeding. Trocklebeck scales and cangrela claws are both harder'n hell. They use 'em in machinery."

"Oh," said Billy Hatch.

"But you better git forrard there and tend to them grapples, 'cause a-gitting hold of the ground here is ticklish business. Ef we miss it's just too bad. We'll roll over and over for miles and miles, like as not."

Hank Karns said no more for a time. As a matter of fact, he was far from ready to land. He had deliberately come up on the wrong side of the planet for making the landing at Sam Atkins' little trading store. He wanted to give it a general bird's-eye view. It was in a valley scooped out by the wind that he saw the first sign of a major alteration. Behind a huge artificial wind-break lay a group of new buildings, and one of them was dome-topped with a squat chimney. A matter of ten miles farther away was another new house and a small warehouse behind it. Just over the next low ridge lay Atkins' place.

"Standby," warned Hank Karns, as he brought the ship's nose into the hurricane and began losing altitude. "Don't let go 'til I tell you--and that'll be when we're practically down."

Just as the keel kissed the ground, Karns gave the signal and the anchors fell. At the same instant he cut his rockets and the ship began falling away to leeward, dragging her anchors behind. In a moment they grabbed, pulled loose and grabbed again. That time they held. Karns released a long pent-up sigh. It was a perfect landing. Sam Atkins' house lay but a bare hundred yards on the quarter.

There was still the business of shooting a wire over the trading post and making it fast at both ends, Atkins coming out to do his share. Then Captain Karns slid down the wire to the shack and allowed himself to be hauled in by the trading post keeper.

"I'm glad to see you, Cap'n, and sorry at the same time," was his greeting from Sam Atkins. Atkins was a grumpy sort and a self-made hermit. He seemed to enjoy the solitude of windswept Mercury and the tedious, strenuous work of snaring cangrelas.

"How come sorry, Sam?" asked Hank Karns, as innocently as if he had never visited Venus.

Atkins looked mournfully at him and jerked a thumb eastward.

"I've got neighbors--bad ones. Whatever you do, don't go over there. They'll trick you somehow. They don't want outsiders coming here, they've got a ship of their own that makes a trip every week or so."

Hank Karns raised his eyebrows.

"Trocklebecks must be breeding faster'n they used to," he observed. "Mercury never produced enough to justify more than two trips a year, if that."

"Mmm," commented Hank Karns. He remembered those serpents well. They were originally a Venusian beast--a variety of dragon, and extremely venomous. They were really legged snakes, having thirty-six pairs of taloned legs and crab-like claws near the head, but the body was slender, rarely exceeding a yard in girth, for all their thirty-foot lengths.

"I'm closing up shop here," said the gloomy Atkins next. "You can take the pick of what I own if you'll set me down at the next stop you make."

"Now you just keep your shirt on, Sam Atkins," replied Hank Karns, "I'm not a-doing anything of the damn kind. I'm going over and have a talk with those gents in the next valley...."

Sam Atkins glared at him.

"No fool like an old fool," he remarked, hopelessly.

Hank Karns chuckled.

"Seems folks are agreed pretty well about me. But let's eat, so I can get along my way."

Unmooring and getting in the anchors was a troublesome job with only a green boy for a helper, but Hank Karns managed it. At that it was a much easier maneuver to move the ship that mile over the ridge than to try to crawl it in the teeth of a permanent typhoon. Moreover, if there was cargo to take aboard--and Hank Karns felt sure there would be--the ship would have to be moved anyhow. So he took off, circumnavigated the planet, and came up again, this time to the little office building and warehouse next to Atkins' shack. He took good care not to go near the other group of buildings.

As he descended, casting about for a good spot to fling out his grapnels he kept a sharp eye out for signs of life about the buildings. All he saw was a couple of bronzed men, both bald as billiard balls, working over some object in the lee of the warehouse. Upon sighting the descending spaceship one went inside the warehouse and the other caught hold of the guide-wire and let himself be blown down to what appeared to be the office building. The man had on a heavily quilted suit of gray material--quilted so that if he lost his hold and was blown away, he would not bruise himself to death along the ground.

On the fourth try, Hank Karns managed to ground his ship not far from the office door. This time he landed to leeward and had to make his way up-wind by crawling, assisted by a Mercurian "staff," or one of the rakes among his trade goods. As he crawled, he observed he was being watched from a loophole beside the door. But as he drew himself erect, the door opened and a man came out to greet him.

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