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Title: Jupiter's Joke
Author: A. L. Haley
Release Date: November 5, 2020 [EBook #63640]
Language: English
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JUPITER'S JOKE
By A. L. HALEY
_Casey Ritter, the guy who never turned
down a dare, breathed a prayer to the gods
of idiots and spacemen, and headed in toward
the great red spot of terrible Jupiter._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Those methane and ammonia planets, take it from me, they're the
dead-end of creation, and why the Old Man ever thought them up I'll
never know. I never thought I'd mess around any of them, but things
can sure happen. A man can get himself backed into a corner in this
little old solar system. It just ain't big enough for a gent of scope
and talent; and the day the Solar System Customs caught me red-handed
smuggling Kooleen crystals in from Mars, I knew I was in that corner,
and sewed up tight.
Sure, the crystals are deadly, but I was smuggling them legitimately,
in a manner of speaking, for this doctor to experiment with. He wasn't
going to sell them for dope. But--and this was the 'but' that was
likely to deprive the System of my activities--even experimenting with
them was illegal even if it needed to be done; also, I had promised not
to rat on him before taking the job.
Well, Casey Ritter may be a lot of things we won't mention, but he
doesn't rat on his clients. So there I was, closeted with the ten
members of the S.S. Customs Court, getting set to hear the gavel
fall and the head man intone the sentence that would take me out of
circulation for a long, long time. And instead, blast me, if they
didn't foul me with this trip to good old Jupiter.
I didn't get it at first. I'd argued with 'em, but inside I'd been all
set for the sentence, and even sort of reconciled to it. I could even
hear the words in my mind. But they didn't match what the judge was
saying. I stood there gaping like a beached fish while I sorted it out.
Then I croaked, "Jupiter! What for? Are you running outa space in stir?
Want to choke me to death in chlorine instead?" Being civil to the
court didn't seem important just then. Jupiter was worse than the pen,
a lot worse. Jupiter was a death sentence.
The senior judge rapped sharply with his gavel. He frowned me down and
then nodded at the judge on his right. This bird, a little old hank of
dried-up straw, joined his fingertips carefully, cleared his scrawny
throat, and told me what for.
"You've no doubt heard tales of the strange population of Jupiter,"
he said. "Every spaceman has, I am sure. Insect-like creatures who
manifestly migrated there from some other system and who inhabit
the Red Spot of the planet, floating in some kind of artificial
anti-gravity field in the gaseous portion of the atmosphere--"
I snorted. "Aw, hell, judge, that's just one of those screwy fairy
tales! How could any--"
The senior judge rapped ferociously, and I skidded to a halt. Our
little story teller patiently cleared his skinny throat again.
"I assure you it is no fairy tale. We possess well-authenticated
photographs of these inhabitants, and if you are prepared to visit them
and in some way worm from them the secret of their anti-gravity field,
the government stands ready to issue you a full pardon as well as a
substantial monetary reward. Your talents, Mr. Ritter, seem, shall we
say, eminently suited to the task."
* * * * *
He beamed at me. I looked around. They were all beaming. At me!
Suddenly I smelled a rat as big as an elephant. That whole Kooleen
caper: Had it been just a trap to lead me straight to this? I hadn't
been able to figure how they'd cracked my setup....
At the thought my larynx froze up tight. This was worse than I'd
thought. Government men trapping me and then beaming at me. And a full
pardon. And a reward. Oh, no! I told myself, it wasn't possible. Not
when I already had more counts against me than a cur has fleas. Not
unless it was a straight suicide mission!
I feebly massaged my throat. "Pictures?" I whispered. "Show me 'em."
Crude, but it was all I could squeeze out.
I squeezed out more when I saw those pictures, though. Those
inhabitants were charming, just charming if you like scorpions. Well,
a cross between a scorpion and a grasshopper, to be accurate. Floating
among that red stuff, they showed up a kind of sickly purple turning to
gangrene around the edges.
The bleat of anguish that accompanied my first view of those beauties
had taken my voice again. "How big?" I whispered.
He shrugged, trying for nonchalance. "About the size of a man, I
believe."
I raised my shrinking head. "Take me to jail!" I said firmly, and
collapsed onto my chair.
A crafty-eyed buzzard across the table leaned toward me. "So this is
the great Casey Ritter, daredevil of the Solar System!" he sneered.
"Never loses a bet, never turns down a dare!"
I shuddered. "You're telling that one! And besides, a man's got to draw
the line somewhere. And I'm drawing it right here. Take me to jail!"
They were really stumped. They hadn't expected me to take this attitude
at all. No doubt they had it figured that I'd gratefully throw myself
into a sea of ammonia among man-size scorpions just for the hell of
it. Nuts! After all, in the pen a man can eat and breathe, and a guard
won't reach in and nip off an arm or leg while he's got his back
turned. How stupid could they get?
When I finally wore them down and got to my little cell, I looked
around it with a feeling of real coziness. I even patted the walls
chummily and snapped a salute at the guard. It makes me grind my molars
now to think of it. The way that bunch of stuffed shirts in the S.S.C.
made a gold-barred chimpanzee out of me has broken my spirit and
turned me into an honest trader. Me, Casey Ritter, slickest slicker in
the Solar System, led like a precious infant right where I'd flatly
refused to go! In plain English, I underestimated the enemy. Feeling
safe and secure in the grip of the good old Iron College, I relaxed.
At this strategic point, the enemy planted a stoolie on me. Not in my
cell block. They were too smart for that. But we met at recreation, and
his mug seemed familiar, like a wisp of smoke where no smoke has got a
right to be; and after awhile I braced him.
I was right. I'd met the shrimp before when I was wound up in an
asteroid real estate racket. Pard Hoskins was his alias, and he had the
tag of being a real slick operator. We swapped yarns for about a week
when we met, and then I asked him what's his rap this trip.
"Oh, a pretty good jolt if they can keep hold of me," he says. "I just
made a pass at the Killicut Emeralds, that's all, and got nabbed."
"Oh, no!" I moaned. "What were you trying to do, start a feud between
us and Mars?"
He shrugged, but his little black-currant eyes began to sparkle with
real passion, the high voltage kind that only a woman in a million, or
a million in a bank, can kindle in a guy. "Buddy," he said reverently,
"I'd start more than that just to get me mitts on them stones again!
Why, you ain't never seen jools till you've seen them! Big as hen's
eggs, an even dozen of 'em; and flawless, I'm a-shoutin', not a flaw!"
His eyes watered at the memory, yearning like a hound-dog's over a
fresh scent.
I couldn't believe it. Those emeralds were in the inner shrine of the
super-sacred, super-secret temple of the cavern-dwelling tribe of
Killicuts on Mars--the real aborigines. Bleachies, we call them, sort
of contemptuously; but those Bleachies are a rough lot when they're
mad, and if Pard had really got near those emeralds, he should be
nothing but a heap of cleaned bones by now. Either he was the world's
champion liar or its bravest son, and either way I took my hat off to
him.
"How'd you make the getaway?" I asked, taking him at his word.
He looked loftily past me. "Sorry. Gotta keep that a secret. Likewise
where I cached 'em."
"Cached what?"
"The rocks, stupe."
I hardly heard the cut. "You mean you really did get away with them?"
My jaw must've been hanging down a foot, because I'd just been playing
along with him, not really believing him, and now all of a sudden I
somehow knew that he'd really lifted those emeralds. But how? It was
impossible. I'd investigated once myself.
He nodded and then moved casually away. I looked up and saw a guard
coming.
That night I turned on my hard prison cot until my bones were so much
jelly, trying to figure that steal. The next morning I got up burning
with this fever for information, only to find that Pard had got himself
put in solitary for mugging a guard, and that really put the heat on
me. I chewed my fingernails down to the quick by the time he got out a
week later.
* * * * *
By that time he really had me hooked. I'd of sworn he was leveling
with me. But he wouldn't tell me how he'd worked the steal. Instead,
he opened up on the trade he'd booked for the string. He said, "When I
chisel me way outa this squirrel cage, I'm gonna hit fer good old Jupe
and sell 'em to Akroida. She's nuts about jools. What that old girl
won't give me fer 'em--" He whistled appreciatively, thinking about it.
"Jupiter!" I goggled at him. "Akroida! Who's she?"
He looked at me as if I hadn't yet got out from under the rock where he
was sure I'd been born. "Don't you know nothin', butterhead?"
From him I took it. I even waited patiently till the master spoke
again. The memory still makes me fry.
"Akroida," he explained in his own sweet time, "is the queen-scorp
of them idiotic scorpions that lives on Jupiter. I sold her the
Halcyon Diamond that disappeared from the World Museum five years ago,
remember?" He winked broadly. "It come from Mars in the first place,
you know. Mars! What a place fer jools! Damn desert's lousy with 'em,
if it wasn't so much trouble to dig 'em out--" He went off into a dream
about the rocks on Mars but I jerked him back.
"You mean those scorpions have really got brains?"
"Brains!" he snorted. "Have they got brains! Why, they're smarter than
people! And not ferocious, neither, in spite of how they look, if you
just leave 'em alone. That's all they want, just to be left alone.
Peace an' quiet, and lots of methane and ammonia and arsenic, that's
fer them. Besides, the space suit rig you got to wear, they can't bite
you. Akroida's not a bad old girl. Partial to arsenic on her lettuce,
so I brought her a hundred pounds of the stuff, an' she went fer that
almost like it was diamonds, too. Did I rate around there fer awhile!"
He sighed regretfully. "But then I went and made her mad, an' I'm kinda
persona non grata there right now. By the time I gnaw outa this here
cheese trap, though, I figger she'll be all cooled off and ready fer
them emeralds."
I went back to my cot that night, and this time instead of biting my
nails, I bit myself. So I faced it. Casey Ritter lost his nerve, and
along with it, the chance of a lifetime. A better man than me had
already penetrated the Great Red Spot of old Jupiter and come out
alive. That thought ate me to the quick, and I began to wonder if it
was too late, after all. I could hardly wait for morning to come, so
that I could pry more information out of Pard Hoskins.
But I didn't see Pard for a few days. And then, a week later, a group
of lifers made a break that didn't jell, and the whole bunch was locked
up in the blockhouse, the special building reserved for escapees. Pard
Hoskins was in the bunch. He'd never get out of there, and he knew it.
So did I.
For three more days I worked down my knuckles, my nails being gone,
while I sat around all hunched up, wondering feverishly if Pard would
make a deal about those emeralds. Then I broke down and sent out a
letter to the S.S.C.
The Big Sneer of the conference table promptly dropped in on me,
friendly as a bottle of strychnine. But for a lad headed for Jupiter
that was good training, so I sneered right back at him, explained the
caper, and we both paid a visit to Pard. In two days the deal was made
and the caper set up. There were a few bits of info that Pard had to
shell out, like where the emeralds were, and how to communicate with
those scorpions, and how he'd made Akroida mad.
"I put on a yeller slicker," he confessed sadly. "That there ammonia
mist was eatin' into the finish on my spacesuit, so I draped this
here slicker around me to sorta fancy up the rig before goin' in to
an audience with the old rip." He shook his head slowly. "The kid
that took me in was colorblind, so I didn't have no warning at all.
I found out that them scorpions can't stand yeller. It just plain
drives them nuts! Thought they'd chaw me up and spit me out into the
chlorine before I could get outa the damn thing. If my colorblind pal
hadn't helped me, they'd of done it, too. And Akroida claimed I done it
a-purpose to upset her."
Then he winked at me. "But then I got off in a corner and cooked up
some perfume that drives them nuts the other way; sorta frantic with
ecstasy, like the book says. Didn't have a chance to try it on Akroida,
though. She wouldn't give me another audience. It's in the stuff they
cleaned outa me room: a poiple bottle with a bright green stopper."
He ruminated a few minutes. "Tell you what, chump. Make them shell out
with a green an' poiple spacesuit--them's the real Jupiter colors--an'
put just a touch o' that there perfume on the outside of it. Akroida'll
do anything fer you if she just gets a whiff. Just anything! But
remember, don't use but a drop. It's real powerful."
II
Real powerful, said the man. What an understatement! But the day I was
set adrift in that sea of frozen ammonia clouds mixed with nice cozy
methane gas I sure prayed for it to be powerful, and I clutched that
tiny bottle like that boy Aladdin clutching his little old lamp.
I'd had a lot of cooperation getting that far. An Earth patrol had
slipped down onto the Red Desert of Mars and picked up the Killicut
Emeralds from where Pard Hoskins had cached them; and safe out in space
again, we had pored over that string of green headlights practically
slobbering. But the Big Sneer of the S.S.C., the fellow that had got
me into this caper, was right there to take the joy out of it all and
to remind me that this was public service, strictly.
"These--" he had proclaimed with a disdainful flourish, like a placer
miner pointing to a batch of fool's gold--"These jewels are as nothing,
Ritter, compared with the value of the secret you are to buy with
them. And be assured that if you're man enough to effect the trade--"
He paused, his long nose twitching cynically--"IF you succeed, your
reward will be triple what you could get for them in any market. Added
to which, IF you succeed, you will be a free man."
That twitch of the nose riled me no little. "I ain't failed yet!" I
snarled at him. "Just you wait till I do, feller!" I slipped the string
of emeralds back into its little safe. "Instead of sniping at me, why
don't you get that brain busy and set our rendezvous?"
With that we got down to business and fixed a meeting point out on
Jupiter's farthest moon; then they took me in to the edge of Jupiter's
ice-cloud and turned me loose in a peanut of a space boat with old Jupe
looming ahead bigger than all outdoors and the Red Spot dead ahead. I
patted my pretty enameled suit, which was a study in paris green and
passionate purple.
I patted the three hundred pounds of arsenic crystals for Akroida and
anyone else I might have to bribe. I anxiously examined my suit's air
and water containers and the heating unit that would keep them in
their proper state. I had already gone over the space boat. Yeah, I
was as nervous as a cat with new kittens. Feeling again for my little
bottle of horrid stench, I breathed a prayer to the god of idiots and
spacemen, and headed in. The big ship was long gone, and I felt like a
mighty small and naked microbe diving into the Pacific Ocean.
That famous Red Spot was that big, too. It kept expanding until the
whole universe was a fierce, raw luminous red. Out beyond it at first
there had been fringes of snow-white frozen ammonia, but now it was all
dyed redder than Mars. Then I took the plunge right into it. Surprise!
The stuff was plants! Plants as big as meadows, bright red, floating
around in those clouds of frozen ammonia like seaweed! Then I noticed
that the ammonia around them wasn't frozen any more and peeked at the
outside thermometer I couldn't believe it. It was above zero. Then I
forgot about the temperature because it dawned on me that I was lost. I
couldn't see a thing but drifting ammonia fog and those tangles of red
floating plants like little islands all around. Cutting down the motor,
I eased along.
But my green boat must have showed up like a lighthouse in all that
red, because it wasn't long until I spotted a purple and green
hopper-scorp traveling straight toward me, sort of rowing along with
a pair of stubby wings. He didn't seem to be making much effort, even
though he was climbing vertically up from the planet. In fact, he
didn't seem to be climbing at all but just going along horizontally.
There just wasn't any up or down in that crazy place. It must be that
anti-grav field, I concluded. The air was getting different, too, now
that I was further in. I'm no chemist, and I couldn't have gotten out
there to experiment if I had been, but those plants were certainly
doing something to that ammonia and methane. The fog thinned, for one
thing, and the temperature rose to nearly forty.
Meanwhile the hopper-scorp reached the ship. Hastily I squirted some of
my Scorpion-Come-Hither lure on the chest of my spacesuit, opened the
lock, and popped out, brave as could be. Face to face with that thing,
though, I nearly lost my grip on the handle. In fact, I'd have fainted
dead away right there if Pard Hoskins hadn't been there already and
lived. If that little shrimp could do it, I could, too.
I braced up and tapped out the greeting Pard had taught me. My
fiendish-looking opponent tapped right back, inquiring why the hell
I was back so soon when I knew that Akroida was all set to carve me
into steaks for just any meal. But the tone was friendly and even
intimate--or rather, the taps were. There was even a rather warm
expression discernible in the thing's eyes, so I took heart and decided
to ignore the ferocious features surrounding those eyes. After all, the
poor sinner's map was made of shell, and he wasn't responsible for its
expression.
I tapped back very politely that he must be mistaking me for someone
else. "I've never been here before, and so I've never met the charming
lady," I informed him. "However, I have something very special in the
way of jewels--not with me, naturally--and the rumor is that she might
be interested."
He reared back at that, and reaching up, plucked his right eye out of
the socket and reeled it out to the end of a two-foot tentacle, and
then he examined me with it just like an old-time earl with one of
those things they called monocles. Pard hadn't warned me about those
removable eyes, for reasons best known to himself. I still wake up
screaming....
Anyway, when that thing pulled out its eye and held it toward me, I
backed up against the side of the ship like I'd been half-electrocuted.
Then I gagged. But I could still remember that I had to live in that
suit for awhile, so I held on. Then that monstrosity reeled in the eye,
and I gagged again.
My actions didn't bother him a bit. "Jewels, did you say?" he tapped
out thoughtfully, just like an ordinary business man, and I managed to
tap out yes. He drifted closer; close enough to get a whiff....
* * * * *
A shudder of ecstasy stiffened him. His head and eyes rolled with it,
and he wafted closer still. Right there I began to harbor a premonition
that there might be such a thing as being too popular in Scorpdom, but
I thrust this sneak-thief idea back into limbo.
Taking advantage of his condition, I boldly tapped out, "How's about
taking me on a guided tour through this red spinach patch to Akroida,
old pal?" Or words to that effect.
He lolled his hideous cranium practically on my shoulder. "Anything!
Just anything you desire, my dearest friend."
I tried to back off from him a bit, but the ship stopped me. "I'm Casey
Ritter. What's your label, chum?"
"Attaboy," he ticked coyly.
"Attaboy?" Things blurred around me. It couldn't be. It was just plain
nuts. Then I got a glimmer through my paralyzed gray matter. "Who named
you that?"
He simpered. "My dear friend, Pard Hoskins."
I breathed again. How simple could I get? He'd already mistaken me for
Pard, hadn't he? Then I remembered something else. "How come you aren't
mad at him? Don't you hate yellow, too?"
He hung his silly head. "I fear I am colorblind," he confessed sadly.
Right there I forgave him for pulling that eye on me. He was the guide
I needed, the one who had got Pard out alive. I almost hugged him.
"Lead off, old pal," I sang out, and then had to tap it. "I'll follow
in my boat."
Well, I'd met the first of the brood and was still alive. Not only
alive but loved and cherished, thanks to Pard's inventiveness and to
a kindly fate which had sent Pard's old pal my way. A great man, Pard
Hoskins. How had he made friends with the brute in the first place?
Being once more inside my spaceboat, I raised my helmet, which was like
one of those head-pieces they used to put on suits of armor instead of
the usual plastic bubble. And it was rigged out with phony antennae and
mandibles and other embellishments calculated to interest my hosts.
Whether it interested them or not, it was plenty uncomfortable for me.
Peeking out the porthole I saw that my guide was fidgeting and looking
over his shoulder at my ship, so I eased in the controls and edge after
him. To my surprise a vapor shot out of a box that I had taken for a
natural lump on his back, and he darted away from me. I opened the
throttle and tore after him among the immense red blobs that were now
beginning to be patterned with dozens of green-and-purple scorpions,
all busy filling huge baskets with buds and tendrils, no doubt.
Other scorpions oared and floated about in twos and threes in a free
and peaceable manner that almost made me forget that I was scared to
death of them, and they stared at my boat with only a mild interest
that would have taught manners to most of my fellow citizens of Earth.
It wasn't until we had covered some two hundred miles of this that
something began to loom out of the mist, and I forgot the playboys and
the field workers. It loomed higher and higher. Then we burst out into
a clearing several miles in diameter, and I saw the structure clearly.
It was red, like everything else in this screwy place, and could only
have been built out of compressed blocks of the red plant.
In shape it was a perfect octagon. It hung poised in the center of the
cleared space, suspended on nothing. It had to be at least a mile in
diameter, and its sides were pierced with thousands of openings through
which its nightmare occupants appeared and disappeared, drifting in
and out like they had all the time in the world. I stared until my
eyeballs felt paralyzed.
Pard was right again. These critters had brains. And my S.S.C.
persecutor was right, too. That anti-grav secret was worth more than
any string of rocks in the system, including the Killicut Emeralds.
Then I swallowed hard. Attaboy was leading me straight across to a
window. Closing my helmet, my fingers fumbled badly. My brain was
fumbling, too. "Zero hour, chump!" it told me, and I shuddered. Picking
up the first hundred pounds of the arsenic, I wobbled over to the
airlock.
III
That palace was like nothing on earth. Naturally, you'll say, it's
on Jupiter. But I mean it was even queerer than that. It was like no
building on any planet at all. And, in fact, it wasn't on a planet; it
was floating up there only two hundred miles in from the raw edge of
space.
In that building everything stayed right where it was put. If it was
put twelve or fifty feet up off the floor, it stayed there. Not that
there wasn't gravity. There was plenty of gravity to suit me--just
right, in fact--and still they had furniture sitting around in the air
as solid as if on a floor. Which was fine for flying hopper-scorps, but
what about Casey Ritter, who hadn't cultivated even a feather?
Attaboy, however, had the answers for everything. Towing me from the
airlock to the window ledge, he again sniffed that delectable odor on
my chest, caressed me with his front pair of legs while I manfully
endured, and then without warning tossed me onto his back above the
little box and flew off with me along a tunnel with luminous red walls.
We finally came to the central hall of the palace, and at the sight
of all that space dropping away, I clutched at his shell and nearly
dropped the arsenic. But he didn't have any brakes I could grab, so he
just flew out into mid-air in a room that could have swallowed a city
block, skyscrapers and all. It was like a mammoth red cavern, and it
glowed like the inside of a red light.
No wonder those scorpions like green and purple. What a relief from all
that red!
A patch in the middle of the hall became a floating platform holding up
a divan twenty feet square covered with stuff as green as new spring
grass, and in the center of this reclined Akroida. It had to be. Who
else could look like that? No one, believe me, boys and girls, no one!
Our little Akroida was a pure and peculiarly violent purple--not a
green edge anywhere. She was even more purple than my fancy enameled
space suit, and she was big enough to comfortably fill most of that
twenty-foot couch. To my shrinking eyes right then she looked as big as
a ten-ton cannon and twice as mean and dangerous. She was idly nipping
here and there as though she was just itching to take a hunk out of
somebody, and the way the servants were edging away out around her, I
could see they didn't want to get in range. I didn't blame them a bit.
Under the vicious sag of her Roman nose, her mandibles kept grinding,
shaking the jewels that were hung all over her repulsive carcass, and
making the Halcyon Diamond on her chest blaze like a bonfire.
Attaboy dumped me onto a floating cushion where I lay clutching and
shuddering away from her and from the void all around me, and went
across to her alone with the arsenic.
Akroida rose up sort of languidly on an elbow that was all stripped
bone and sharp as a needle. She pulled an eyeball out about a yard and
scanned Attaboy and the box. He closed in to the couch all hunched
over, ducked his head humbly half-a-dozen times, and pushed the box
over beside her. Akroida eased her eyeball back, opened the box and
sniffed, and then turned to Attaboy with a full-blown Satanic grin. I
could hear her question reverberate away over where I was.
"Who from?" asked Akroida.
That conversation was telegraphed to me blow by blow by the actions of
those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code
at all.
"Who from?" Attaboy cringed lower and blushed a purple all-over blush.
"Dear lady, it is from an interspace trader who possesses some truly
remarkable jewels," he confessed coyly.
Akroida toyed with the Halcyon Diamond and ignored the bait. "His
name?" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in
his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my
direction. "Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?"
Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. "I--uh--the
stones were so amazing, Royal Akroida, that I didn't pay much attention
to the--uh--trader. He does seem to resemble an--ah--earthman." He
ducked his head and fearfully waited.
A sort of jerking quiver ran through Akroida. She reared up even
higher. Her mean Roman nose twitched. "An earthman? Like Pard Hoskins?"
Attaboy shrank smaller and smaller. He could only nod dumbly.
The storm broke, all right. That old dame let out a scream like a
maddened stallion and began to thrash around and flail her couch with
that dragon's tail of hers.
* * * * *
I began to quake all over. My nice little jail, I thought frantically.
My cozy little cell. Those dear sweet guards. I'd left them all to be
eaten alive by that purple devil. Why didn't I bat my silly brains
out on my cell wall when this idea first sneaked in? Marooned on that
damned hassock a hundred feet above the floor I began to think, and
fast.
"Bring him here!" roared Akroida, tapping it out so fast it sounded
like gunfire. She gnashed her mandibles and glared until I started
shriveling. "Bring him here! He'll dare to come around and insult me,
will he? I'll flail him limb from limb and chew his bones to shreds!
I'll bite him into chunks! I'll.... Bring him here!"
She made a furious lunge at Attaboy. Trembling and blanching to a
muddy lavender, he got out of there and scrambled over to me with big
tears rolling down his stiff shell cheeks. Why the poor purple sap, I
thought, he really cares! These things really have feelings! I looked
at him with new respect and even a little affection.
"Look, kid," I admonished, trying to keep my fingers from shaking as
I tapped. "Just don't worry about a thing. I still think I can handle
this. Just take me across slow and easy, and we'll hope for the best."
With a mournful sigh he picked me up, tossed me onto his shoulder, and
as per instructions, drifted over to the floating platform.
All I had was the little bottle of Pard's scorp-scent. "This had better
be good!" I confided to the image of Pard Hoskins, which somehow
managed to get between me and that raging she-dragon on the couch.
"This had sure better be good, son!"
I waited until Akroida was leaning forward practically gnashing her
mandibles in my face while her front pair of legs grabbed and pawed
for me. She was too fat and bulky to jump at me, or I'd have been a
dead planet-bo right there. But I had to take the chance. There wasn't
a drop of perfume to waste. At the last moment I lifted that precious
little bottle and squirted the stuff right in her face.
Her mandibles flew open and stayed there. Slowly her front legs
dropped; a film of ecstasy formed over those wild glittering eyes. She
sank back and began to croon. Yes, croon! My helmet vibrated with it.
Then her long skinny front legs made beckoning motions to me. Frosts of
romance! She wanted me to share her couch!
Attaboy didn't ask if I was willing. Delightedly he dumped me beside
her. And then, having inhaled some of that perfume himself and not
being able to tear himself away, he forgot all about etiquette and
curled up beside us to bask some more in those luscious mists.
* * * * *
What's more revolting than a hopper-scorp in a tantrum? I'll tell you,
chums: a hopper-scorp in the throes of infatuation! Especially when the
hopper-scorp in question is Akroida. For one thing, she's so big. And
for another, she's so unmentionably thorough. She was infatuated from
the spike on her repulsive forehead down to the devilish sting on her
tail. With me!
I tried to tell her it was Attaboy she must love, not me. She merely
wallowed her hideous head, as big as a bucket, in my suffering lap,
clattering it against my enameled space suit; she rolled her horrible
eyes while her whole monstrosity of a body twitched and quivered with
emotion. I tried to turn the conversation to the emeralds. She wasn't
even interested. We hadn't needed the emeralds at all; we'd only needed
Pard's special concoction. Furtively, behind the horseplay, I began to
plan to salvage those emeralds for myself.
That stuff must have been making me delirious, too.
I don't know how long that blood-curdling love scene went on. That
awful she-scorp picked me up and rocked me while I scraped diamonds
and rubies along my visor and chest. She signalled servants who were
hovering on all sides taking in the show, and they rushed to bring
tidbits that I had to hide behind cushions because I couldn't open my
helmet in that atmosphere. Then the servants, getting whiffs of that
cursed perfume, would snuggle up with us, until there wasn't elbow room
on that big couch. Akroida would churn her tail around and knock them
all off so that she could cuddle me better. Then she got the idea of
singing to me. And my air was running out.
Finally, while I still had a bit of air left, the jag began to wear
off, and Akroida slumped over and went to sleep holding me tenderly
against her breast-shell. The moment I felt her grip relax, I wiggled
out of there. Attaboy was fast asleep too. Desperately I decided that
I could row through the air if those scorps could. Grabbing Attaboy's
arm, I stepped off into nothing. Sure enough, the anti-grav worked for
me, too. Sweating with the thought of what would have been left of
Casey Ritter if it hadn't, I sort of swam away from there, towing my
guide. Out at the boat, I anchored him outside the airlock and crawled
inside. I'm not ashamed to admit that I got out of my helmet, gasped in
some good old oxygen, and collapsed. What a day!
IV
When the time rolled around for my next visit to Akroida, I decided
to play it cool and careful. I was fortified with a snooze, a slug of
Scotch, and a meal, but I still wasn't busting out with courage. I made
a mental note to be damn cautious about that perfume. Maybe it was
necessary to overdo it that first time, with her shouting for my blood,
but that was all past I hoped.
I sprayed just a tiny bit on my suit, calculated to soothe and lure
but not to excite. I wanted no more cuddling with Akroida, please!
Then with my pal Attaboy, I stiffened my backbone and plunged out into
that poison gas they call atmosphere. I let Attaboy ferry me. He was
very hazy about our return trip from Akroida's chamber, so I decided to
leave him ignorant. No use to let even him know I could locomote the
scorpion way. I might need to make a getaway, and surprise might be of
the very essence.
But I didn't need to worry. Old Akroida had slept off her jag, and
right away I found out that she wasn't queen-scorp for nothing. The old
girl was real canny. She made Attaboy park me on a hassock just within
tapping distance, and sat there holding her head in a way that made me
soften with sympathy, knowing just how she felt. Many's the time....
Yes, sir, poor old Ak was nursing a real, ten-karat hangover. She waved
a claw so feebly it didn't even stir those ropes of jewels hung all
over her. "Casey Ritter," she tapped. "What did you do to me?"
All to myself, inside my hard-shell suit, I began to laugh; but it was
no laughing matter, because she was beginning to regain her strength.
She pointed a claw at me, and it was quite a bit steadier than the wave
had been. "You did something!" she accused, and very intelligently,
too, for a body that had never before had a hangover. "What was it?"
I didn't like the tone of that, and began tapping out a hasty denial.
"Not intentionally, noble queen, believe me! I simply brought you that
exquisite perfume as a gift from an admirer of yours whom I met on my
way here. I had no idea how strong it was. I should have tested it
first on your servant here." I pointed to Attaboy. "I can see that we
need to thin it some, but it's wonderful, isn't it, now?"
She didn't even flutter an antenna at this coyness. "Earthman," she
tapped out sternly, "you want something. Earthmen always bring trouble,
and they always want something! No Earthman brings presents to Akroida
from simple friendship. Tell me what you're after, Casey Ritter!"
I sighed. "O.K., noble queen. I just wanted to calm you down so I could
talk to you. I didn't have any idea that perfume would affect you that
way. I just thought you'd like it, and then you'd be pleasant and we
could talk."
She snorted like an old war horse, but that hurt her head. After a
minute of clutching it, she groaned, and then tapped carefully, "I'm
calm now. You can talk. What do you want?"
"Fine," I tapped out heartily. "I want to make a trade with you."
Her lack of enthusiasm would have chilled a wooden Indian. But I
figured that the time had come to get on with it, regardless. She just
wasn't going to stall, or let me, either.
"Ah, yes, a trade!" was all she said, but she gave it a nasty twist.
I plunge. "I want to swap your anti-gravity secret for a string of the
most magnificent emeralds you ever dreamed of, Akroida. Why, they'd
make that batch you're wearing look like little glass beads! You'll
have to see them to--"
She didn't let me finish. A sort of high-pitched cackle of amazement
issued from her bony jaws; but then she floored me by changing the
subject completely, I thought. That was just my little error. A man can
sure miss the boat when dealing with these foreign races. She began
to ask me questions about the Earth, and was she interested! She even
forgot about her hangover. And she completely ignored the emeralds.
You'd have thought I hadn't even mentioned the things.
* * * * *
This went on for about an hour, and then all of a sudden she leaned
back on her paris-green cushions, inhaled a pinch of arsenic, and began
to chuckle a sort of brassy chuckle that sent shivers down my back. The
chuckles got bigger and bigger until she busted out into a full-size
horse laugh that would have jangled the chandelier if there'd been one
to jangle.
Her head bounced back and forth on her skinny neck, and the Halcyon
Diamond bounced around on her chest like a loose headlight. All her
jewels began to bounce and jangle. Droves of servants swarmed around
to peek, while Attaboy just floated there with his mouth wide open.
I nudged him. "What's so funny?" I asked, but he only shook his head
dumfounded.
That awful laughing was sure giving me the creeping jeevies, and it
wasn't until she finally tapered off in a series of snorts and giggles
that I began to breathe again. I braced myself for what might come
next. But talk about unpredictable females! Human or scorpion, they're
all the same. She floored me again.
"It's a deal, Casey Ritter!" She tapped out the words with relish.
"Fair and open, straight across the board. Those emeralds for our
anti-gravity plans and formulae."
I was stunned. A statement like that after that laugh! And she hadn't
even seen the emeralds. You couldn't tell old horse trader Ritter that
there wasn't something phony. But she just snickered at my expression
and waved to the servants who were still hovering around. It took a
dozen of them to hoist her up.
With me following on Attaboy, we flew down a serpentine hallway for
half a mile until we came to a room even bigger than her audience
chamber, only this one was filled with machinery suspended in the air
just like the furniture was up above. It was big machinery, too, but it
didn't seem to matter.
Akroida waved a feeler at it all. "Just to show you that I'm not
holding anything back," she tapped out. "Here it all is, and there on
the wall are the plans and descriptions."
Attaboy flew me over, and I stared at them. They were a real neat job,
and the mathematics were the same old math we use on Earth, or I was
even more of a sucker than I thought I was. I shook the old bean to
clear it, but I still couldn't get a glimmer about the caper she was
staging. But I could still hear that laugh....
Well, the rest is history, as the books say. With me still not
believing a word of it, we made the trade, fair and open, as Akroida
had said. She even let me stand by while her scorps copied the plans,
and then I checked and rechecked a dozen times. Not a phony mark
anywhere. When I handed over the emeralds, she cooed in rapture. A
thing like that coo? Well, she did.
Akroida didn't hardly know I was going. She just waved me, her
lover-for-a-day, carelessly away and went on stroking those beauties,
while the hopper-scorps hovered around in such crowds that Attaboy and
I had to elbow our way out of there. As a parting gift, out at the
edge of that hellish Red Spot, I reached out of the lock and handed
Attaboy the little bottle with what was left of the perfume.
"Here you are, pal," I tapped. "This'll promote you to Court Lover
number one. Kiss the old girl for me."
V
Back on Earth I was still trancing around feeling the air with my
fingers and pinching myself here and there just to make sure I had
really got out of that inferno all in one piece, when they hauled
me out to the airport to present me with my ship. They even made
a ceremony of it and gave me a medal for distinguished service to
Mankind. And who do you think presented the medal?
I looked at the dapper little figure waltzing over all togged out
in the S.S.C. uniform, and then I did a double take. It was no
other than my old pal of the Iron College, perfume-manufacturer for
hopper-scorps, Pard Hoskins. He came over and clapped me on the back,
but I didn't feel a thing. I was paralyzed.
So I'd been taken for a ride right from the start. So they'd outsmarted
me all the way: out-fought and out-figured me, and even planted a
stoolie on me and made me like it.
I didn't hear a word they said, nor even notice when they pinned
the medal on. When they got through with me, I just crawled into my
beautiful new ship like it was an old tin can and headed out. I didn't
even care right then if I landed back in Akroida's bony lap. I'd have
stuck my head in her mandibles and told her, "Chew it up, Ak. It's just
a cabbage, anyway."
But a funny thing happened. Out there, mooning along all alone in the
dark with not a soul in a million miles, I heard Akroida laughing. It
was a horrible sound, a kind of metallic neighing and snorting, but
pretty soon I began laughing, too. I didn't know what the joke was, but
all of a sudden I knew I'd find out some day. It did me a lot of good.
I braced up and went on to Venus, where I made some real good trades.
I didn't try any more capers, though. I was all capered out.
It wasn't until a year later, in a joint on Mars, that I ran into Pard
Hoskins again. I gave him the old frost, but he only grinned sort of
sad and touched me for some of that filthy Martian beer. He looked real
seedy.
"What's the matter?" I asked, as sarcastic as I could manage. "They
sending you over the road again to nab another sucker?"
He shook his head, and sighed into his beer. "I got fired, Casey," he
confessed. "Over that there Killicut caper. Those plans--I might of
known." He shook his head again like a tired old man.
A shiver ran over me. "Here it comes," I thought.
"What about those plans?" I asked. "Weren't they all O.K.?"
He sighed again. "Nope. Oh, the plans was O.K. They was strictly bona
fide. Only they won't work on Earth. I told 'em about that anti-grav in
the first place. Then I almost caused an inter-world incident stealin'
the Killicut Emeralds. And now the damn thing won't work on Earth!" He
set to chewing his lip and staring into his beer.
I took him by his scrawny shoulder and shook. "Why won't it work?" I
yelled. "I knew there was something, the way she laughed! Why won't it
work?"
He stared dully at me. "Laugh, did she? Well, she sure had the last
laugh. It won't work in our atmosphere; just on a chlorine or methane
planet. It works like the poles of a battery. That Great Red Spot is
just the negative pole. All those there plants change the atmosphere
just enough to make it a strong negative field. Then all they have to
do is counter-balance that with enough positive, and there they are. It
works like anti-gravity, only it ain't. Only we ain't got an atmosphere
we can work that way. Cripes! So she laughed!" His hoarse voice stopped
and he stared bitterly at the wall. Then he cussed for two minutes
without stopping. He took a big swig of that rotten beer. "I'll bet
she's laughing herself fat, the old rip!"
Well, I hope she is. In the dead of night sometimes I can hear her; and
pretty soon I'm laughing, too....
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