Read Ebook: A Zloor for Your Trouble! by Reynolds Mack Terry W E Illustrator

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Ebook has 186 lines and 9046 words, and 4 pages

"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?"

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?"

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?"

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.

Mike whistled. "Where'd you ever get a thousand credits, Nap?"

"I broke into my piggy bank," I growled. "It's every cent I had in the world."

"Well, we're all in the same boat. He made bets with all the boys. If we go back, we lose. As long as we stay here we make five credits a month, plus expenses.--And, besides, all of us are just conceited enough to think we can figure out eventually how to get one of the things home."

"Now we're getting to the point," I told him. "What's so hard about catching a zloor?"

He began to grin again. "Nothing," he said. "And that's all I'll tell you now. Go out and find the gruesome details yourself."

I went over to the wash basin and filled the bowl and dipped my head into the water. I didn't say anything else to him until I'd dried myself and climbed into my clothes.

"All right," I said then. "Where do I go to see about getting equipment and men for an expedition to the zloor country?"

He laughed. "All you need in the way of equipment is your feet, that is, besides a plastic oxygen mask when you leave the dome." He pointed out the window. "Just head for the nearest rocky area, there's lots of it; you won't have any trouble finding a zloor. In fact, they're numerous--no natural enemies."

I scowled at him. "What keeps them down then?"

"Insufficient forage, I guess. You'll see."

I picked up my .22 Hornet rifle and started for the door. "No time like the present to--" I began to say.

Mike was still grinning in the irritating manner he'd been displaying ever since the night before. "You won't need that gun," he told me.

"I'll just take it along anyway," I snapped.

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