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Read Ebook: Grifters' Asteroid by Gold H L Horace Leonard Lubbers Bob Illustrator
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Ebook has 2192 lines and 110831 words, and 44 pages
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample. His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed. Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction cups--"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly, put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink. When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features straightened out.
"Are--are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face, and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity. "It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that snake oil?"
"Plus what--arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods--an entire case, mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
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