'And Then There Were None' by Eric Frank Russell
Source: https://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
Index: chapter
1 chapter 2 chapter 3 chapter 4 chapter 5 chapter 6 end notes
Chapter 1
[The ambassador] went silent as the ship closed in and the planet’s
day-side face rapidly expanded. Then followed the usual circling and photographing.
A lot of villages and small towns were to be seen, also cultivated areas
of large extent. It was obvious that this planet—while by no means
fully exploited—was in the hands of colonists who were energetic and
numerically strong.
Relieved that life was full, abundant and apparently free from alien disease.
Grayder brought the ship down onto the first hard-standing he saw. Its enormous
mass landed feather-like on a long, low hump amid well-tended fields. Again
all the ports became filled with faces as everyone had a look at the new
world.
The midway airlock opened, the gangway went down. As before, exit was made
in strict order of precedence starting with the Ambassador and finishing
with Sergeant Major Bidworthy. Grouping near the bottom of the gangway they
spent the first few moments absorbing sunshine and fresh air.
His Excellency scuffled the thick turf under his feet, plucked a blade
of it grunting as he stooped. He was so constructed that the effort came
close to an athletic feat and gave him a crick in the belly.
‘Earth-type grass. See that, Captain? Is it just a coincidence or
did they bring seed with them?’
‘Could be either. Several grassy worlds are known. And almost all
colonists went away loaded with seeds.’
‘It’s another touch of home, anyway. I think I’m going
to like this place.’ The Ambassador gazed into the distance, doing
it with pride of ownership. ‘Looks like there’s someone working
over there. He’s using a little motor-cultivator with a pair of fat
wheels. They can’t be very backward, it seems.
‘H’m-m-m !’ He rubbed a couple of chins. ‘Bring him
here. We’ll have a talk and find out where it’s best to make a
start.’
‘Very well.’ Captain Grayder turned to Colonel
Shelton. ‘His Excellency wishes to speak to that farmer.’ He
pointed to the faraway figure.
‘That farmer,’said Shelton to Major Hame. ‘His Excellency
wants him at once.’
‘Bring that farmer here,’ Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. ‘Quickly.’
‘Go get that farmer,’ Deacon told Sergeant Major Bid-worthy.
‘And hurry—His Excellency is waiting.’
Bidworthy sought around for a lesser rank, remembered that they were all
inside, cleaning ship and not smoking, by his order. He, it seemed, was
elected.
Tramping across four fields and coming within hailing distance of his objective,
he performed a precise military halt, released a barracks square bellow
of, ‘Hi, you!’ and waved urgently.
The farmer stopped his steady trudging behind the tiny cultivator, wiped
his forehead, glanced casually around. His indifferent manner suggested
that the mountainous bulk of the ship was a mirage such as are five a penny
around these parts. Bidworthy waved again, making it an authoritative summons.
Now suddenly aware of the sergeant major’s existence, the farmer calmly
waved back, resumed his work.
Bidworthy employed a brief but pungent expletive which—when its flames
had died out—meant, ‘Dear me!’ and marched fifty paces
nearer. He could now see that the other was bushy-browed, leather-faced,
tall and lean.
‘Hi!’ he bawled.
Stopping the cultivator again, the farmer leaned on one of of its shafts
and idly picked his teeth.
Smitten by the ingenious thought that perhaps during the last few centuries
the old Terran language had been abandoned in favour of some other lingo,
Bidworthy approached to within normal talking distance and asked, ‘Can
you understand me?’
Can any person understand another?’ inquired
the farmer with clear diction.
Bidworthy found himself afflicted with a moment of confusion. Recovering,
he informed hurriedly, ‘His Excellency the Earth Ambassador wishes
to speak with you at once.’
‘Is that so?’ The other eyed him speculatively, had another
pick at his teeth. ‘And what makes him excellent?’
‘He is a person of considerable importance,’ said Bidworthy,
unable to decide whether the other was trying to be funny at this expense
or alternatively was what is known as a character. A lot of these long-isolated
pioneering types liked to think of themselves as characters.
‘Of considerable importance,’ echoed the farmer, narrowing
his eyes at the horizon. He appeared to be trying to grasp a completely
alien concept. After a while, he inquired, ‘What will happen to your
home world when this person dies?’
‘Nothing,’ Bidworthy admitted.
‘It will roll on as before?’
‘Yes.’
‘Round and round the sun?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then,’ declared the farmer flatly, ‘if his existence
or nonexistence makes no difference he cannot be important.’ with
that, his little engine went chuff-chuff and the cultivator rolled forward.
Digging his nails into the palms of his hands, Bidworthy spent half a minute
gathering oxygen before he said in hoarse tones, ‘Are you going to
speak to the Ambassador or not?’
‘Not.’
‘I cannot return without at least a message for His Excellency.’
‘Indeed?’ The other was incredulous. ‘What is to stop
you?’ Then, noticing the alarming increase in Bidworthy’s colour,
he added with compassion, ‘Oh, well. you may tell him that I said’—he
paused while he thought it over—‘God bless you and good-bye.’
Sergeant Major Bidworthy was a powerful man who weighed more than two hundred
pounds, had roamed the cosmos for twenty-five years and feared nothing.
He had never been known to permit the shiver of one hair—but he was trembling all
over by the time he got back to the base of the gangway.
His Excellency fastened a cold eye upon him and demanded, ‘Well?’
‘He refuses to come.’ Bidworthy’s veins stood out
on his forehead. ‘And, sir, if only I could have him in the space
troops for a few months I’d straighten him up and teach him to
move at the double.’
‘I don’t doubt that, Sergeant Major,’ the Ambassador
soothed. He continued in a whispered aside to Colonel Shelton. ‘He’s
a good fellow but no diplomat. Too abrupt and harsh-voiced. Better go
yourself and fetch that farmer. We can’t loaf around forever waiting
to learn where to begin.’
‘Very well, Your Excellency.’ Trudging across the field,
Shelton caught up with the farmer, smiled pleasantly and said, ‘Good
morning, my man.’
Stopping his machine, the farmer sighed as if it were one of those
days one has sometimes. His eyes were dark brown, almost black as they
regarded the newcomer.
‘What makes you think I’m your man.’
‘It is a figure of speech,’ explained Shelton. He could
see what was wrong now. Bidworthy had fallen foul of an irascible type.
They’d been like two dogs snarling at one another. Oh, well, as
a high- ranking officer he was competent to handle anybody, the good
and the bad, the sweet and the sour, the jovial and the liverish. Shelton
went on oilily, ‘I was only trying to be courteous.’
‘It must be said,’ meditated the farmer, ‘that that
is something worth trying for—if you can make it.’
Pinking a little, Shelton continued with determination, ‘I am
commanded to request the pleasure of your company at the ship.’
‘Commanded?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really and truly commanded?’
‘Yes.’
The other appeared to wander into a momentary daydream before he came
back and asked blandly, ‘Think they’ll get any pleasure
out of my company?’
‘I’m sure of it,’ said Shelton.
‘You’re a liar,’ said the farmer.
His colour deepening, Colonel Shelton snapped, ‘I do not permit
people to call me a liar.’
‘You’ve just permitted it,’ the farmer pointed out.
Letting it pass, Shelton insisted, ‘Are you coming to the ship?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Myob!’ said the farmer.
‘What was that?’
‘Myob!’ he repeated. It sounded like some sort of insult.
Shelton went back, told the Ambassador, ‘That fellow is one of
those too-clever types. At the finish all I could get out of him was
‘Myob’ whatever that means.’
‘Local slang,’ chipped in Grayder. ‘An awful lot
of it develops in four centuries. I’ve come across one or two
worlds where there has been so much of it that to all intents and purposes
it formed a new language.’
‘He understood your speech?’ asked the Ambassador of Shelton.
‘Yes, Your Excellency. And his own is quite good. But he won’t
leave his work.’ He reflected briefly, suggested, ‘If it
were left to me I’d bring him in by force with an armed escort.’
‘That would encourage him to give essential information,’
commented the Ambassador with open sarcasm. He patted his stomach, smoothed
his jacket, glanced down at his glossy shoes. ‘Nothing for it
but to go and speak to him myself.’
Shelton was shocked. ‘Your Excellency, you can’t do that!’
‘Why can’t I?’
‘It would be undignified.’
‘I am fully aware of the fact,’said the Ambassador dryly.
‘What alternative do you suggest?’
‘We can send out a patrol to find someone more co-operative.’
‘Someone better informed, too,’ Captain Grayder offered.
‘At best we won’t get much out of one surly hayseed. I doubt
whether he knows one quarter of what we require to learn.’
‘All right.’ The Ambassador dropped the idea of doing his
own chores. ‘Organise a patrol and let’s have some results.’
‘A patrol,’ said Colonel Shelton to Major Hame. ‘Nominate
one immediately.’
‘Call out a patrol,’ Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. ‘At
once.’
‘Parade a patrol forthwith, Sergeant Major,’ said Deacon.
Bidworthy lumbered up the gangway, stuck his head into the airlock
and shouted,’ sergeant Gleed, out with your squad and make it
snappy!’ He gave a suspicious sniff and went farther into the
lock. His voice gained several more decibels. ‘Who’s been
smoking? By heavens, if I catch the man—’
Across the fields something quietly went chuff-chuff while
fat wheels crawled along.
The patrol formed by the right in two ranks of eight men each, turned
at a barked command and marched off in the general direction of the ship’s
nose. They moved with perfect rhythm if no great beauty of motion. Their
boots thumped in unison, their accoutrements clattered with martial noises
and the orange-coloured sun made sparkles on their metal.
Sergeant Gleed did not have to take his men far. They were one hundred
yards beyond the ship’s great snout when he noticed a man ambling
across the field to his right. Treating the ship with utter indifference,
this character was making toward the farmer still toiling far over to
the left.
‘Patrol, right wheel!’ yelled Gleed, swift to take advantage
of the situation. The patrol right-wheeled, marched straight past the
wayfarer who couldn’t be bothered even to wave a handkerchief
at them. Now Gleed ordered an about-turn and followed it with a take-him
gesture.
Speeding up its pace, the patrol opened its ranks and became a double
file of men tramping on either side of the lone pedestrian. Ignoring
his suddenly acquired escort the latter continued to plod straight ahead
like one long convinced that all is illusion.
‘Left wheel!’ roared Gleed, trying to bend the whole caboodle
toward the waiting Ambassador.
Swiftly obedient, the double file headed leftward, one, two, three,
hup! It was neat, precise execution beautiful to watch. Only one thing
spoiled it: the man in the middle stubbornly maintained his self-chosen
orbit and ambled casually between numbers four and five of the right-hand
file.
That upset Gleed, especially since the patrol continued to thump steadily
ambassadorwards for lack of a further order. His Excellency was being
treated to the unmilitary spectacle of an escort dumbly boot-beating
one way while its prisoner airily mooched another way. In due course
Colonel Shelton would have plenty to say about it and anything he forgot
Bidworthy would remember.
‘Patrol!’ hoarsed Gleed, pointing an outraged finger at
the escapee and momentarily dismissing all regulation commands from
his mind, ‘Get that mug!’
Breaking ranks, they moved at the double and surrounded the wanderer too
closely to permit further progress. Perforce he stopped.
Gleed came up and said somewhat breathlessly, ‘Look, the Earth
Ambassador wants to speak to you—that’s all.’
The other gazed at him with mild blue eyes. He was a funny looking sample,
long overdue for a shave. He had a fringe of ginger whiskers sticking
out all around his face and bore faint resemblance to a sunflower.
‘I should care,’ be said.
‘Are you going to talk with His Excellency?’ Gleed persisted.
‘Naw.’ The other nodded toward the farmer. ‘Going
to talk to Zeke.’
‘The Ambassador first,’ retorted Gleed, wearing his tough
expression. ‘He’s a big noise.’
‘I don’t doubt that,’ remarked the sunflower, showing
what sort of a noise he had in mind.
‘Smartie Artie, eh?’ grated Gleed, pushing his face close
and making it unpleasant. He signed to his men. ‘All right, hustle
him along. We’ll show him!’
Smartie Artie chose this moment to sit down. He did it sort of solidly,
giving himself the aspect of a squatting statue anchored for the remainder
of eternity. But Gleed had handled sitters before, the only difference
being that this one was cold sober.
‘Pick him up,’ commanded Gleed, ‘and carry him.’
So they picked him up and carried him, feet first, whiskers last. He
hung limp and unresisting in their hands, a dead weight made as difficult
as possible to bear. In this inauspicious manner he arrived in the presence
of the Ambassador where the escort plonked him on his feet.
Promptly he set out for Zeke.
‘Hold him, darn you!’ howled Gleed.
The patrol grabbed and clung tight. The Ambassador eyed the whiskers
with well-bred concealment of distaste, coughed delicately and spoke.
‘I am truly sorry that you had to come to me in this fashion.’
‘In that case,’ suggested the prisoner, ‘you could
have saved yourself some mental anguish by not permitting it to happen.’
‘There was no other choice. We’ve got to make contact somehow.’
‘I don’t see it’ said Ginger Whiskers. ‘What’s
so special about this date?’
‘The date?’ The Ambassador frowned in puzzlement. ‘What
has the date got to do with it?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m asking.’
‘The point eludes me.’ The Ambassador turned to the others.
‘Do you understand what he’s aiming at?’
Shelton said, ‘I can hazard a guess, Your Excellency. I think
he is hinting that since we’ve left them without contact for four
hundred years there is no particular urgency about making it today.’
He looked to the sunflower for confirmation.
That worthy rallied to his support by remarking, ‘You’re
doing pretty well for a halfwit.’
Regardless of Shelton’s own reaction, this was too much for Bidworthy
purpling nearby. His chest came up and his eyes caught fire. His voice
was an authoritative rasp.
‘Be more respectful while addressing high-ranking officers!’
The prisoner’s mild blue eyes turned upon him in childish amazement,
examined him slowly from feet to head and all the way down again. The
eyes drifted back inquiringly to the Ambassador.
‘Who is this preposterous person?’
Dismissing the question with an impatient wave of his hand, the Ambassador
said, ‘see here, it is not our purpose to bother you from sheer
perversity, as you seem to think. Neither do we wish to detain you any
longer than is necessary. All w—’
Pulling at his face-fringe as if to accentuate its offensiveness, the
other interjected, ‘It being you, of course, who determines the
length of the necessity?’
‘On the contrary, you may decide that for yourself,’ gave
back the Ambassador, displaying admirable self-control. ‘All you
need do is tell us—’
‘Then I’ve decided it right now,’ the prisoner chipped
in. He tried to heave himself free of his escort .‘Let me go talk
to Zeke.’
‘All you need do,’ the Ambassador persisted, ‘is
tell us where we can find a local official who can put us into touch
with your central government.’ His gaze was stern, commanding,
as he added, ‘For instance where is the nearest police post?’
‘Myob!’ said Ginger Whiskers.
‘What was that?’
‘Myob!’
‘The same to you,’ retorted the Ambassador, his patience
evaporating.
‘That’s precisely what I’m trying to do,’ insisted
the prisoner, enigmatically. ‘Only you won’t let me do it.’
If I may make a suggestion, Your Excellency,’ but in Shelton,
‘allow me—’
‘I require no suggestions and I won’t allow you,’
said the Ambassador, somewhat out of temper. ‘I have had enough
of all this stupid tomfoolery. I think we have landed at random in an
area reserved for imbeciles. It would be as well to recognize the fact
and get out of it with no more delay.’
‘Now you’re talking,’ approved Ginger Whiskers. ‘And
the farther the better.’
‘We have no intention of leaving this planet, if that is what’s
in your incomprehensible mind,’ asserted the Ambassador. He stamped
a proprietory foot into the turf. ‘This is part of the Terran
Empire. As such it is going to be recognized, charted and organized.’
‘Heah, heah!’ put in the senior civil servant who aspired
to honours in elocution.
His Excellency threw a frown behind, went on, ‘We’ll move
the ship to some other section where brains are brighter.’ He
turned attention to the escort. ‘Let him go. Probably he is in
a hurry to borrow a razor.’
They released their grips. Ginger Whiskers at once turned toward the
distant farmer much as if he were a magnetized needle irresistibly drawn
Zekeward. Without another word he set off at his original slovenly pace.
Disappointment and disgust showed on the faces of Bidworthy and Gleed
as they watched him depart.
‘Have the vessel shifted at once, Captain,’ the Ambassador
said to Grayder. ‘Plant it near to a likely town—not out
in the wilds where every yokel views strangers as a bunch of crooks.’
He marched importantly up the gangway. Captain Grayder followed, then
Colonel Shelton, then the elocutionist. Next, their successors in correct
order of precedence. Lastly, Gleed and his men. The airlock closed.
The warning siren sounded. Despite its immense bulk the ship shivered
briefly from end to end and soared without deafening uproar or spectacular
display of flame.
Indeed, there was silence save for a little engine going chuff-chuff and the murmurings of the two men walking behind it. Neither took the
trouble to look around to see what was happening.
‘Seven pounds of prime tobacco is a heck of a lot to give for
one case of brandy,’ Ginger Whiskers protested.
‘Not for my brandy,’ said Zeke. ‘It’s stronger
than a thousand Gands and smoother than an Earthman’s downfall.’
Chapter
2
The great ship’s next touchdown was made on a wide flat about
two miles north of a town estimated to hold twelve to fifteen thousand
people. Grayder would have preferred to survey the place from low altitude
before making his landing but one cannot handle a huge space-going vessel
as if it were an atmospheric tug. Only two things can be done when so
close to a planetary surface—the ship is taken straight up or
brought straight down with no room for fiddling between-times.
So Grayder dumped the ship in the best spot he could find when finding
is a matter of split-second decisions. It made a rut only ten feet deep,
the ground being hard with a rock bed. The gangway was shoved out. The
procession descended in the same order as before.
Casting an anticipatory look toward the town, the Ambassador registered
irritation. ‘Something is badly out of kilter here. There’s
the town not so far away. Here we are in plain view with a ship like
a metal mountain. At least a thousand people must have seen us coming
down even if all the rest are holding seances behind drawn curtains
or playing poker in the cellars. Are they interested? Are they excited?’
‘It doesn’t seem so,’ contributed Shelton, pulling
industriously at an eyelid for the sake of feeling it spring back.
‘I wasn’t asking you. I am telling you. They are not excited.
They are not surprised. They are not even interested. One would almost
think they’d had a ship here that was full of smallpox or that
swindled them out of something. what’s wrong with them?’
‘Possibly they lack curiosity,’ Shelton ventured.
‘Either that or they’re afraid. Or maybe the entire gang
of them is more cracked than any bunch on any other world. Practically
all these planets were appropriated by dotty people who wanted to establish
a haven where their eccentricities could run loose. And nutty notions
become conventional after four hundred years of undisturbed continuity.
It is then considered normal and proper to nurse the bats out of your
grandfather’s attic. That and generations of inbreeding can create
some queer types. But we’ll cure them before we’re through.’
‘Yes, Your Excellency, most certainly we will.’
‘You don’t look so well-balanced yourself, chasing that
eyelid around your face,’ reproved the Ambassador. He pointed
south-east as Shelton stuck the fidgety hand firmly into a pocket. ‘There’s
a road over there. Wide and well-built by the looks of it. They don’t
construct a highway for the mere fun of it. Ten to one it’s an
important artery.’
‘That’s how it looks to me,’ Shelton agreed.
‘Put that patrol across it, Colonel. If your men don’t
bring in a willing talker within reasonable time we’ll send the
entire battalion into the town itself.’
‘A patrol,’ said Shelton to Major Hame.
‘Call out the patrol,’ Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon.
‘That patrol again, Sergeant Major,’ said Deacon.
Bidworthy raked out Gleed and his men, indicated the road, barked a
bit and shooed them on their way.
They marched, Gleed in front. Their objective was half a mile away
and angled toward the town. The left-hand file had a clear view of the
nearest suburbs, eyed the buildings wistfully, wished Gleed in warmer
regions with Bidworthy stoking the hell-fire beneath him.
Hardly had they reached their goal than a customer appeared. He came
from the town’s outskirts, zooming along at fast pace on a contraption
vaguely like a motorcycle. It ran on a big pair of rubber balls and
was pulled by a caged fan. Gleed spread his men across the road.
The oncomer’s machine suddenly gave forth a harsh, penetrating
sound that reminded everybody of Bidworthy in the presence of dirty
boots.
‘Stay put,’ warned Gleed. ‘I’ll skin the fellow
who gives way and leaves a gap.’
Again the shrill metallic warning. Nobody moved. The machine slowed,
came up to them at a crawl and stopped. Its fan continued to spin at
slow rate, the blades almost visible and giving out a steady hiss.
‘What’s the idea?’ demanded the rider. He was lean-featured,
in his middle thirties, wore a gold ring in his nose and had a pigtail
four feet long.
Blinking incredulously at this get-up, Gleed managed to jerk an indicative
thumb toward the metal mountain and say, ‘Earthship.’
‘Well, what do you expect me to do about it?—throw a fit
of hysterics?’
‘We expect you to co-operate,’ informed Gleed, still bemused
by the pigtail. He had never seen such a thing before. It was in no
way effeminate, he decided. Rather did it lend a touch of ferocity like
that worn—according to the picture books—by certain North
American aborigines in the dim and distant past.
‘Co-operation,’ mused the rider. ‘Now there is a
beautiful word. You know exactly what it means, of course?’
‘I’m not a dope.’
‘The precise degree of your idiocy is not under discussion at
the moment,’ the rider pointed out. His nose-ring waggled a bit
as he spoke. ‘We are talking about co-operation. I take it you
do quite a lot of it yourself?’
‘You bet I do,’ Gleed assured. ‘And so does everyone
else who knows what’s good for him.’
‘Let’s keep to the subject, shall we? Let’s not sidetrack
and go rambling all over the conversational map.’ He revved up
his fan a little then let it slow down again. ‘You are given orders
and you obey them?’
‘Of course. I’d have a rough time if—’
‘That is what you call co-operation?’ put in the other.
He hunched his shoulders, pursed his bottom lip. ‘Well, it’s
nice to check the facts of history. The books could be wrong.’
His fan flashed into a circle of light and the machine surged forward.
‘Pardon me.’
The front rubber ball barged forcefully between two men, knocking them
aside without injury. With a high whine the machine shot down the road,
its fan-blast making its rider’s plaited hairdo point horizontally
backward.
‘You substandard morons!’ raged Gleed as the pair got up
and dusted themselves. ‘I told you to stand fast What d’you
mean by letting him run out on us like that?’
‘Didn’t have much choice about it, Sarge,’ answered
one surlily.
‘I want none of your back-chat. You could have busted one of
his balloons if you’d had your guns ready. That would have stopped
him.’
‘You didn’t tell us to use our guns.’
‘Where was your own, anyway?’ added a sneaky voice.
Gleed whirled on the others and demanded, ‘Who said that?’
His eyes raked a long row of impassive faces. It was impossible to detect
the culprit ‘I’ll shake you up with the next quota of fatigues,’
he promised. ‘I’ll see to it that—’
‘The Sergeant Major’s coming,’ one of them warned.
Bidworthy was four hundred yards away and making martial progress towards
them. Arriving in due time, he cast a cold, contemptuous glance over
the patrol.
‘What happened?’
‘Giving me a lot of lip, he was,’ complained Gleed after
providing a brief account of the incident. ‘He looked like one
of those Chickasaws with an oil-well.’
‘Did he really?’ Bidworthy surveyed him a moment, then
invited, ‘And what is a Chickasaw?’
‘I read about them somewhere once when I was a kid,’ explained
Gleed, happy to bestow a modicum of learning. ‘They got rich on
oil. They had long, plaited haircuts, wore blankets and rode around
in gold-plated automobiles.’
‘Sounds crazy to me,’ said Bidworthy. ‘I gave up
all that magic-carpet stuff when I was seven. I was deep in ballistics
before I was twelve and military logistics when I was fourteen.’
He sniffed loudly and gave the other a jaundiced eye. ‘Some guys
suffer from arrested development.’
‘They actually existed,’ Gleed maintained. ‘They—’
‘So did fairies,’ snapped Bidworthy. ‘My
mother said so. My mother was a good woman. She didn’t tell me a
lot of goddam lies—often.’ He spat on the road. ‘Be
your age!’ Then he glowered at the patrol. ‘All right, get
out your guns—assuming that you’ve got them and know where
they are and which hand to hold them in. Take orders from me. I’ll
deal personally with the next character who comes along.’
Sitting on a large rock by the roadside, be planted an expectant gaze
on the town. Gleed posed near him, slightly pained. The patrol remained
strung across the road with guns held ready. Half an hour crawled by
without anything happening.
One of the men pleaded, ‘Can we smoke, Sergeant Major?’
‘No!’
They fell into lugubrious silence, licking their lips from time to
time and doing plenty of thinking. They had lots about which to think.
A town—any town of human occupation—had desirable features
not to be found anywhere else in the cosmos. Lights, company, freedom,
laughter, all the makings of life. And one can go hungry too long.
Eventually a large coach emerged from the town’s outskirts, hit
the high road and came bowling towards them. A long, shiny, streamlined
job, it rolled on twenty balls in two rows of ten, gave forth a whine
similar to but louder than that of the motorcycle, and had no visible
fans. It was loaded with people.
At a point two hundred yards from the road-block a loud-speaker under
the vehicle’s bonnet blared an urgent, ‘Make way! Make way!’
‘This is it,’ commented Bidworthy with much satisfaction.
‘We’ve caught a dollop of them. One of them is going to
confess or I’ll resign from the space-service.’ He got off
his rock and stood in readiness.
‘Make way! Make way!’
‘Perforate his balloons if he tries to bull his way through,’
ordered Bidworthy.
It wasn’t necessary. The coach lost pace, stopped with its bonnet
a yard from the waiting file. Its driver peered out of the side of his
cab. Other faces snooped curiously farther back.
Composing himself and determined to try the effect of fraternal cordiality,
Bidworthy went up to the driver and said with great difficulty, ‘Good
morning!’
‘Your time-sense is shot to pot,’ responded the other ungratefully.
He had a heavy blue jowl, a broken nose, cauliflower ears and looked
the sort who usually drives with others in hot and vengeful pursuit.
‘Can’t you afford a watch?’
‘Eh?’
‘It isn’t morning. It’s late afternoon.’
‘So it is,’ admitted Bidworthy, forcing a cracked smile.
‘Good afternoon!’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ mused the driver, leaning
on his steering-wheel and moodily scratching his head. ‘We get
an afternoon in every day. It’s always the same. Morning goes
and what happens? You’re stuck with an afternoon. I’ve become
hardened to it. And this one is just another nearer the grave.’
‘That may be,’ conceded Bidworthy, little struck with this
ghoulish angle, ‘but I have other things to worry about and—’
‘Fat lot of use worrying about anything, past, present or whatever,’
advised the driver. ‘Because there are far bigger worries to come.
Stick around long enough and you’ll have some real stinkers in
your lap.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said Bidworthy, inwardly feeling that this
was a poor time to contemplate the darker side of existence. ‘But
I prefer to deal with my own troubles in my own way.’
‘Nobody’s troubles are entirely their own, nor their methods
of coping,’ continued the tough-looking oracle. ‘Are they
now?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ growled Bidworthy,
his composure thinning down as his blood-pressure built up. He was irefully
conscious of Gleed and the patrol watching, listening and probably grinning
like stupid apes behind his back. There was also the load of gaping
passengers. ‘I think you’re talking just to stall me. You
might as well know that it won’t work. I’m here for a purpose
and that purpose is going to be served. The Terran Ambassador is waiting—’
‘So are we,’ emphasised the driver.
‘He wants to speak to you,’ Bidworthy went stubbornly on,
‘and he’s going to speak to you.’
‘I’d be the last to prevent him. We’ve got free speech
here. Let him step up and say his piece so that we can go our way.’
‘You,’ informed Bidworthy, ‘are going to him.’
He signed to the rest of the coach. ‘The whole lot of you.’
‘Not me,’ denied a fat man sticking his head out of a side
window. He wore thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes look like poached
eggs. Moreover, he was adorned with a tall hat candy-striped in white
and pink. ‘Not me,’ repeated this vision with considerable
firmness.
‘Me neither,’ supported the driver.
‘All right.’ Bidworthy displayed maximum menace. ‘Move
this birdcage one inch backward or forward and we’ll shoot your
pot-bellied tyres to thin strips. Get out of that cab.’
‘Ha-ha. I’m too comfortable. Try fetching me.’
Bidworthy beckoned to the nearest six men. ‘You heard him—take
him up on that.’
Tearing open the cab door, they grabbed. If they had expected the victim
to put up a futile fight against heavy odds, they were disappointed.
He made no attempt to resist. They got him, lugged together and he yielded
with good grace. His body leaned to one side and came halfway out of
the door.
That was as far as they could get him.
‘Come on,’ urged Bidworthy, showing impatience. ‘Heave
him loose. You don’t have to be feeble. Show him who’s who.
He isn’t a fixture.’
One of the men climbed over the body, poked around inside the cab and
announced, ‘He is, you know.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘He’s chained to the steering column.’
‘Nonsense. Let me see.’ He had a look and found that it
was so. A chain and a small but heavy and complicated padlock linked
the driver’s leg to his coach. ‘Where’s the key?’
‘Search me,’ invited the driver.
They did just that. The effort proved futile. No key.
‘Who’s got it?’
‘Myob!’
‘Shove him back into his seat,’ ordered Bidworthy, looking
savage. ‘We’ll take the passengers. One yap is as good as
another so far as I’m concerned.’ Striding to the doors, he
jerked them open.
‘All out and make it snappy.’
Nobody budged. They studied him silently, with various expressions
not one of which did anything to help his ego. The fat man with the
candy-striped hat mooned at his sardonically. Bidworthy decided that
he did not like the fat man and that a stiff course of military calisthenics
might thin him down a bit.
‘You can come out on your feet,’ he suggested to the passengers
in general and the fat man in particular, ‘or on your necks. Whichever
you prefer. Make up your minds.’
‘If you can’t use your head you can at least use your eyes,’
commented the fat man happily. He shifted in his seat to the accompaniment
of metallic clanking noises.
Bidworthy accepted the idea, leaning through the doors for a better look.
Then he clambered into the vehicle, went its full length while carefully
studying each passenger. His florid features were two shades darker when
he emerged and spoke to Sergeant Gleed.
‘They are all chained. Every one of them.’ He glared at
the driver. ‘What’s the purpose of manacling the lot?’
‘Myob!’ said the driver airily.
‘Who has the keys?’
‘Myob!’
Taking a deep breath, Bidworthy declaimed to nobody in particular,
‘Every once in a while I hear of somebody running amok and laying
them out by the dozens. I’ve always wondered why—but now
I know.’ He gnawed his knuckles, added to Gleed, ‘We can’t
run this contraption to the ship with that dummy blocking the controls.
Either we must find the keys or get tools and cut them loose.’
‘Or you could wave us on our way and then go take a pill,’
offered the driver.
‘Shut up! If I’m stuck here another million years I’ll see to it that—’
‘Here’s the Colonel,’ muttered Gleed, giving him
a nudge.
Colonel Shelton arrived, walked once slowly and officiously around
the outside of the coach, examined its construction and weighed up its
occupants. He flinched at the striped hat whose owner leered at him
through the glass. Then he came over to the disgruntled group.
‘What’s the trouble this time, Sergeant Major?’
‘They’re as crazy as all the others, sir. They’re
full of impudence and say, ‘Myob’ and couldn’t care
less about His Excellency. They don’t want to come out and we
can’t make them because they’re chained in their seats.’
‘Chained?’ Shelton’s eyebrow lifted halfway toward
his hair. ‘What on earth for?’
‘I don’t know, sir. All I can tell you is that they’re
fastened in like a bunch of gangsters being hauled to the pokey and—’
Shelton moved off without waiting to hear the rest. He had a look for
himself, came back.
‘You may have something there, Sergeant Major. But I don’t
think they are criminals.’
‘No, sir?’
‘No.’ He threw a significant glance towards the fat man’s
colourful headgear and several other sartorial eccentricities including
a ginger-haired individual’s foot-wide polka-dotted bow. ‘It’s
more likely they’re a consignment of lunatics being taken to an
asylum. I’ll ask the driver.’ Going to the cab, he said,
‘Do you mind telling me your destination?’
‘Yes,’ responded the other.
‘Very well, where is it?’
‘Look,’ said the driver, ‘are we talking the same
language?’
‘Eh? Why?’
‘You’ve just asked me whether I mind and I said yes.’
He make a disparaging gesture. ‘I do mind.’
‘You refuse to tell?’
‘Your aim’s improving, Sonny.’
‘Sonny?’ put in Bidworthy, vibrant with outrage. ‘Do
you realize that you are speaking to a colonel?’
‘What’s a colonel?’ asked the driver interestedly.
‘By hokey, if your—’
‘Leave this to me,’ insisted Shelton, waving the furious
Bidworthy down. His expression was cold as he returned attention to
the driver. ‘On your way. I’m sorry you’ve been detained.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ said the driver with exaggerated
politeness. ‘I’ll do as much for you some day.’
With that enigmatic remark he let his machine roll for-ward. The patrol
parted to make room. Building up its whine to the top note, the coach
sped down the road and diminished into the dusty distance.
‘This planet,’ swore Bidworthy, staring purple-faced after
it, ‘has more no-good bums in need of discipline than any place
this side of—’
‘Calm yourself, Sergeant Major,’ urged Shelton. ‘
I feel exactly the same way as you do—but I’m taking care
of my arteries. Blowing them full of bumps like seaweed won’t
solve any problems.’
‘Maybe so, sir, but-’
‘We’re up against something mighty peculiar here,’
Shelton went on. We’ve got to find out precisely what it is and
how best to cope with. In all probability it means we’ll have
to devise new tactics. So far the patrol has achieved nothing. It is
wasting its time. Obviously we’ll have to concoct a more effective
method of getting into touch with the powers-that-be.
March the men back to the ship, Sergeant Major.’
‘Very well, sir.’ Bidworthy saluted, swung around, clicked
his heels, opened a cavernous mouth.
‘Patro-o-ol . . . right form—’
Aboard ship the resulting conference lasted well into the night and
halfway through the following morning. During these argumentative hours
various oddments of traffic, mostly vehicular, passed along the road.
But nothing paused to view the monster spaceship, nobody approached
for a friendly word with its crew. The strange inhabitants of this world
seemed to be afflicted with a local form of mental blindness, unable
to see a thing until it was thrust into their faces and then surveying
it squint-eyed.
One passer-by in mid-morning was a long, low truck whining on two dozen
balls and loaded with girls wearing bright head-scarves. The girls were
tunefully singing something about one little kiss before we part, dear.
A number of troops loafing near the gangway came eagerly to life, waved,
whistled and yoohooed. Their effort was a total waste for the singing
continued without break or pause and nobody waved back.
To add to the discomforture of the love-hungry, Bidworthy stuck his
head out of the airlock and rasped, ‘If you monkeys are bursting
with surplus energy I can find a few jobs for you to do—nice,
dirty ones. ’ He seared them one at a time before he withdrew.
Up near the ship’s nose the top brass sat around the chart-room’s
horseshoe table and debated the situation. Most of them were content
to repeat with extra emphasis what they had said the previous evening,
there being no new points to bring up.
‘Are you certain,’ the Ambassador asked Grayder, ‘that
this planet has not been visited since the last emigration transport
dumped its final load four centuries ago?’
‘I’m quite positive, Your Excellency. Any such visit would
be on record.’
‘Yes, if made by a Terran ship. But what about others? I feel
it in my bones that at sometime or other these people have fallen foul
of one or more vessels calling unofficially and have been leery of spaceships
ever since. Perhaps somebody got tough with them and tried to muscle
in where he wasn’t wanted. Or perhaps they’ve had to beat
off a gang of pirates. Or maybe they’ve been swindled by unscrupulous
traders.’
‘Absolutely impossible, Your Excellency,’ declared Grayder,
suppressing a smile. ‘Emigration was so widely scattered over
so large a number of worlds that even today every one of them is under-populated,
under-developed and utterly unable to build spaceships of any kind no
matter how rudimentary. Some may have the technical know-how but they
lack the industrial facilities, of which they need plenty.’
‘Yes, that is what I’ve always understood.’
Grayder went on, ‘All Blieder-drive vessels are built in the
system of Sol and registered as Terran ships. Complete track is kept
of their movements and their whereabouts are always known. The only
other spaceships in existence are eighty or ninety antiquated rocket
jobs bought at scrap price by the Epsilon system for haulage work between
its fourteen closely-spaced planets. An old-fashioned rocket-ship couldn’t
reach this world in a hundred years.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Unofficial boats capable of this long range just don’t
exist,’ Grayder assured. ‘Neither do space buccaneers and
for much the same reason. A Blieder-drive ship is so costly that a would-be
pirate would have to be a billionaire to become a pirate.’
‘Then,’ said the Ambassador heavily, ‘back we go
to my original theory; that a lot of inbreeding has made them crazier
than their colonizing ancestors.’
‘There’s plenty to be said in favour of that idea,’
put in Shelton. ‘You should have seen the coach- load I looked
over. There was a fellow like a bankrupt mortician wearing odd shoes,
one brown and one a repulsive yellow. Also a moon-faced gump sporting
a hat apparently made from the skin of a barber’s pole, a1l. stripy.’
With a sad attempt at wit, he finished, ‘The only thing missing
was his bubble-pipe-and probably he’ll be given that when he arrives.’
‘Arrives where?’
‘I don’t know, Your Excellency. They refused to tell us
where they were going.’
Giving him a satirical look, the Ambassador remarked, ‘ Well,
that is a valuable addition to the sum total of our knowledge. Our minds
are now enriched by the thought that an anonymous individual may be
presented with a futile object for an indefinable purpose when he reaches
his unknown destination.’
Shelton subsided wishing that he had never seen the fat man or, for
that matter, the fat man’s cockeyed world.
‘Somewhere they’ve got a capital, a civic seat, a centre
of government wherein function the people who hold all the strings,’
the Ambassador asserted. ‘We’ve got to find that place before
we can take over and reorganize on up-to-date lines. A capital is big
by the standards of its own administrative area. It is never an ordinary,
nondescript place. It has obvious physical features giving it importance
above the average. It should be easily visible from the air. We must
make a systematic search for it—in fact that’s what we should
have done in the first place. Other planets’ capital cities have
been identified without trouble. What’s the hoodoo on this one?’
‘See for yourself, Your Excellency.’ Grayder poked several
photographs across the table. ‘The situation is rather similar
to that on Hygeia.[1] You can see the two hemispheres
quite clearly. They reveal nothing resembling a superior city. There
isn’t even a town conspicuously larger than its fellows or possessing
enough outstanding features to set it apart from the others.’
‘I don’t put great faith in pictures especially when taken
at high speed or great altitude. The naked eye can always see more.
We’ve got four lifeboats that should be able to search this world
from pole to pole. Why don’t we use them?’
‘Because, Your Excellency, they were not designed for such a
purpose.’
‘Does that matter so long as they get results?’
Patiently, Grayder explained, ‘They were built to be launched
in free space and to hit up forty thousand miles an hour. They are ordinary,
old-style rocket-ships to be used only in a grave emergency.’
‘Well, what of it?’
‘It is not possible to make efficient ground-survey with the
naked eye at any speed in excess of about four hundred miles per hour.
Keep the lifeboats down to that and you’d be trying to fly them
at landing-speed, muffling their tubes, balling up their motors, creating
a terrible waste of fuel and inviting a crash which you’re likely
to get before you’re through.’
‘Then,’ commented the Ambassador, ‘it is high time
we had Blieder-drive lifeboats for Blieder- drive ships.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, Your Excellency. But the smallest
Blieder apparatus has an Earth-mass of more than three hundred tons.
That’s far too much for little boats.’ Picking up the photographs,
Grayder slid them into a drawer. ‘The trouble with us is that
everything we’ve got moves a heck of a lot too fast. What we really
need is an ancient, propeller-driven air-plane. It could do something
that we can’t-it could go slow.’
‘You might as well yearn for a bicycle,’ scoffed the Ambassador,
feeling thwarted.
‘We have a bicycle,’ Grayder informed. ‘Tenth Engineer
Harrison owns one.’
‘And he has actually brought it with him?’
‘It goes everywhere he goes. There’s a rumour that he sleeps
with it.’
‘A spaceman toting a bicycle! ’The Ambassador blew his
nose with a loud honk. ‘I take it that he is thrilled by the sense
of immense velocity it gives him, an ecstatic feeling of rushing headlong
through space?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Your Excellency.’
‘H’m! Bring this Harrison here. I’d like to see him.
Perhaps we can set a crackpot to catch a crackpot.’
Going to the caller-board, Grayder spoke over the ship’s system.
‘Tenth Engineer Harrison will report to the chart-room at once.’
Within ten minutes Harrison appeared, breathless and dishevelled. He
had walked fast three-quarters of a mile from the Blieder room. He was
thin and woebegone, expecting trouble. His ears were large enough to
cut the pedalling with the wind behind him and he wiggled them nervously
as he faced the assembled officers. The Ambassador examined him with
curiosity, much as a zoologist would inspect a pink giraffe.
‘Mister, I understand that you possess a bicycle.’
At once on the defensive, Harrison said, ‘There’s nothing
against it in the regulations, sir, and therefore—’
‘Damn the regulations,’ swore the Ambassador. ‘Can
you ride the thing?’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘All right. We’re stalled in the middle of a crazy situation
and we’re turning to crazy methods to get moving. Upon your ability
and willingness to ride a bicycle the fate of an empire may stand or
fall. Do you understand me, Mister?’
‘I do, sir,’ said Harrison, unable to make head or tail
of this.
‘So I want you to do an extremely important job for me.