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Title: The Happy Castaway
Author: Emmett McDowell
Release Date: October 7, 2020 [EBook #63401]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAPPY CASTAWAY ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
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The Happy Castaway
BY ROBERT E. McDOWELL
Being space-wrecked and marooned is tough
enough. But to face the horrors of such a
planet as this was too much. Imagine Fawkes'
terrible predicament; plenty of food--and
twenty seven beautiful girls for companions.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jonathan Fawkes opened his eyes. He was flat on his back, and a girl
was bending over him. He detected a frightened expression on the
girl's face. His pale blue eyes traveled upward beyond the girl. The
sky was his roof, yet he distinctly remembered going to sleep on his
bunk aboard the space ship.
"You're not dead?"
"I've some doubt about that," he replied dryly. He levered himself to
his elbows. The girl, he saw, had bright yellow hair. Her nose was
pert, tip-tilted. She had on a ragged blue frock and sandals.
"Is--is anything broken?" she asked.
"Don't know. Help me up." Between them he managed to struggle to his
feet. He winced. He said, "My name's Jonathan Fawkes. I'm a space pilot
with Universal. What happened? I feel like I'd been poured out of a
concrete mixer."
She pointed to the wreck of a small space freighter a dozen feet away.
Its nose was buried in the turf, folded back like an accordion. It
had burst open like a ripe watermelon. He was surprised that he had
survived at all. He scratched his head. "I was running from Mars to
Jupiter with a load of seed for the colonists."
"Oh!" said the girl, biting her lips. "Your co-pilot must be in the
wreckage."
He shook his head. "No," he reassured her. "I left him on Mars. He
had an attack of space sickness. I was all by myself; that was the
trouble. I'd stay at the controls as long as I could, then lock her on
her course and snatch a couple of hours' sleep. I can remember crawling
into my bunk. The next thing I knew you were bending over me." He
paused. "I guess the automatic deflectors slowed me up or I would have
been a cinder by this time," he said.
The girl didn't reply. She continued to watch him, a faint enigmatic
smile on her lips. Jonathan glanced away in embarrassment. He wished
that pretty women didn't upset him so. He said nervously, "Where am I?
I couldn't have slept all the way to Jupiter."
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know."
"You don't know!" He almost forgot his self-consciousness in his
surprise. His pale blue eyes returned to the landscape. A mile across
the plain began a range of jagged foothills, which tossed upward
higher and higher until they merged with the blue saw-edge of a chain
of mountains. As he looked a puff of smoke belched from a truncated
cone-shaped peak. A volcano. Otherwise there was no sign of life: just
he and the strange yellow-headed girl alone in the center of that vast
rolling prairie.
"I was going to explain," he heard her say. "We think that we are on an
asteroid."
"We?" he looked back at her.
"Yes. There are twenty-seven of us. We were on our way to Jupiter, too,
only we were going to be wives for the colonists."
"I remember," he exclaimed. "Didn't the Jupiter Food-growers
Association enlist you girls to go to the colonies?"
She nodded her head. "Only twenty-seven of us came through the crash."
"Everybody thought your space ship hit a meteor," he said.
"We hit this asteroid."
"But that was three years ago."
"Has it been that long? We lost track of time." She didn't take her
eyes off him, not for a second. Such attention made him acutely self
conscious. She said, "I'm Ann. Ann Clotilde. I was hunting when I saw
your space ship. You had been thrown clear. You were lying all in a
heap. I thought you were dead." She stooped, picked up a spear.
"Do you feel strong enough to hike back to our camp? It's only about
four miles," she said.
"I think so," he said.
* * * * *
Jonathan Fawkes fidgeted uncomfortably. He would rather pilot a space
ship through a meteor field than face twenty-seven young women. They
were the only thing in the Spaceways of which he was in awe. Then he
realized that the girl's dark blue eyes had strayed beyond him. A frown
of concentration marred her regular features. He turned around.
On the rim of the prairie he saw a dozen black specks moving toward
them.
She said: "Get down!" Her voice was agitated. She flung herself on her
stomach and began to crawl away from the wreck. Jonathan Fawkes stared
after her stupidly. "Get down!" she reiterated in a furious voice.
He let himself to his hands and knees. "Ouch!" he said. He felt like
he was being jabbed with pins. He must be one big bruise. He scuttled
after the girl. "What's wrong?"
The girl looked back at him over her shoulder. "Centaurs!" she said. "I
didn't know they had returned. There is a small ravine just ahead which
leads into the hills. I don't think they've seen us. If we can reach
the hills we'll be safe."
"Centaurs! Isn't there anything new under the sun?"
"Well, personally," she replied, "I never saw a Centaur until I was
wrecked on this asteroid." She reached the ravine, crawled head
foremost over the edge. Jonathan tumbled after her. He hit the bottom,
winced, scrambled to his feet. The girl started at a trot for the
hills. Jonathan, groaning at each step, hobbled beside her.
"Why won't the Centaurs follow us into the hills?" he panted.
"Too rough. They're like horses," she said. "Nothing but a goat could
get around in the hills."
The gulley, he saw, was deepening into a respectable canyon, then a
gorge. In half a mile, the walls towered above them. A narrow ribbon
of sky was visible overhead. Yellow fern-like plants sprouted from the
crevices and floor of the canyon.
They flushed a small furry creature from behind a bush. As it sped
away, it resembled a cottontail of Earth. The girl whipped back her
arm, flung the spear. It transfixed the rodent. She picked it up, tied
it to her waist. Jonathan gaped. Such strength and accuracy astounded
him. He thought, amazons and centaurs. He thought, but this is the year
3372; not the time of ancient Greece.
The canyon bore to the left. It grew rougher, the walls more
precipitate. Jonathan limped to a halt. High boots and breeches, the
uniform of Universal's space pilots, hadn't been designed for walking.
"Hold on," he said. He felt in his pockets, withdrew an empty cigarette
package, crumpled it and hurled it to the ground.
"You got a cigarette?" he asked without much hope.
The girl shook her head. "We ran out of tobacco the first few months we
were here."
Jonathan turned around, started back for the space ship.
"Where are you going?" cried Ann in alarm.
He said, "I've got a couple of cartons of cigarettes back at the
freighter. Centaurs or no centaurs, I'm going to get a smoke."
"No!" She clutched his arm. He was surprised at the strength of her
grip. "They'd kill you," she said.
"I can sneak back," he insisted stubbornly. "They might loot the ship.
I don't want to lose those cigarettes. I was hauling some good burley
tobacco seed too. The colonists were going to experiment with it on
Ganymede."
"No!"
He lifted his eyebrows. He thought, she is an amazon! He firmly
detached her hand.
The girl flicked up her spear, nicked his neck with the point of it.
"We are going to the camp," she said.
Jonathan threw himself down backwards, kicked the girl's feet out from
under her. Like a cat he scrambled up and wrenched the spear away.
A voice shouted: "What's going on there?"
* * * * *
He paused shamefacedly. A second girl, he saw, was running toward
them from up the canyon. Her bare legs flashed like ivory. She was
barefooted, and she had black hair. A green cloth was wrapped around
her sarong fashion. She bounced to a stop in front of Jonathan, her
brown eyes wide in surprise. He thought her sarong had been a table
cloth at one time in its history.
"A man!" she breathed. "By Jupiter and all its little moons, it's a
man!"
"Don't let him get away!" cried Ann.
"Hilda!" the brunette shrieked. "A man! It's a man!"
A third girl skidded around the bend in the canyon. Jonathan backed off
warily.
Ann Clotilde cried in anguish: "Don't let him get away!"
Jonathan chose the centaurs. He wheeled around, dashed back the way
he had come. Someone tackled him. He rolled on the rocky floor of the
canyon. He struggled to his feet. He saw six more girls race around the
bend in the canyon. With shouts of joy they flung themselves on him.
Jonathan was game, but the nine husky amazons pinned him down by sheer
weight. They bound him hand and foot. Then four of them picked him up
bodily, started up the canyon chanting: "_He was a rocket riding daddy
from Mars._" He recognized it as a popular song of three years ago.
Jonathan had never been so humiliated in his life. He was known in the
spaceways from Mercury to Jupiter as a man to leave alone. His nose had
been broken three times. A thin white scar crawled down the bronze of
his left cheek, relic of a barroom brawl on Venus. He was big, rangy,
tough. And these girls had trounced him. Girls! He almost wept from
mortification.
He said, "Put me down. I'll walk."
"You won't try to get away?" said Ann.
"No," he replied with as much dignity as he could summon while being
held aloft by four barbarous young women.
"Let him down," said Ann. "We can catch him, anyway, if he makes a
break."
Jonathan Fawkes' humiliation was complete. He meekly trudged between
two husky females, who ogled him shamelessly. He was amazed at the ease
with which they had carried him. He was six feet three and no light
weight. He thought enviously of the centaurs, free to gallop across the
plains. He wished he was a centaur.
The trail left the canyon, struggled up the precipitate walls. Jonathan
picked his way gingerly, hugged the rock. "Don't be afraid," advised
one of his captors. "Just don't look down."
"I'm not afraid," said Jonathan hotly. To prove it he trod the narrow
ledge with scorn. His foot struck a pebble. Both feet went out from
under him. He slithered halfway over the edge. For one sickening moment
he thought he was gone, then Ann grabbed him by the scruff of his neck,
hauled him back to safety. He lay gasping on his stomach. They tied a
rope around his waist then, and led him the rest of the way to the top
like a baby on a leash. He was too crestfallen to resent it.
The trail came out on a high ridge. They paused on a bluff overlooking
the prairie.
"Look!" cried Ann pointing over the edge.
A half dozen beasts were trotting beneath on the plain. At first,
Jonathan mistook them for horses. Then he saw that from the withers up
they resembled men. Waists, shoulders, arms and heads were identical to
his own, but their bodies were the bodies of horses.
"Centaurs!" Jonathan Fawkes said, not believing his eyes.
* * * * *
The girls set up a shout and threw stones down at the centaurs, who
reared, pawed the air, and galloped to a safe distance, from which they
hurled back insults in a strange tongue. Their voices sounded faintly
like the neighing of horses.
Amazons and centaurs, he thought again. He couldn't get the problem
of the girls' phenomenal strength out of his mind. Then it occurred
to him that the asteroid, most likely, was smaller even than Earth's
moon. He must weigh about a thirtieth of what he usually did, due to
the lessened gravity. It also occurred to him that they would be thirty
times as strong. He was staggered. He wished he had a smoke.
At length, the amazons and the centaurs tired of bandying insults
back and forth. The centaurs galloped off into the prairie, the girls
resumed their march. Jonathan scrambled up hills, skidded down slopes.
The brunette was beside him helping him over the rough spots.
"I'm Olga," she confided. "Has anybody ever told you what a handsome
fellow you are?" She pinched his cheek. Jonathan blushed.
They climbed a ridge, paused at the crest. Below them, he saw a deep
valley. A stream tumbled through the center of it. There were trees
along its banks, the first he had seen on the asteroid. At the head of
the valley, he made out the massive pile of a space liner.
They started down a winding path. The space liner disappeared behind
a promontory of the mountain. Jonathan steeled himself for the coming
ordeal. He would have sat down and refused to budge except that he knew
the girls would hoist him on their shoulders and bear him into the camp
like a bag of meal.
The trail debouched into the valley. Just ahead the space liner
reappeared. He imagined that it had crashed into the mountain, skidded
and rolled down its side until it lodged beside the stream. It reminded
him of a wounded dinosaur. Three girls were bathing in the stream. He
looked away hastily.
Someone hailed them from the space ship.
"We've caught a man," shrieked one of his captors.
A flock of girls streamed out of the wrecked space ship.
"A man!" screamed a husky blonde. She was wearing a grass skirt. She
had green eyes. "We're rescued!"
"No. No," Ann Clotilde hastened to explain. "He was wrecked like us."
"Oh," came a disappointed chorus.
"He's a man," said the green-eyed blonde. "That's the next best thing."
"Oh, Olga," said a strapping brunette. "Who'd ever thought a man could
look so good?"
"I did," said Olga. She chucked Jonathan under the chin. He shivered
like an unbroken colt when the bit first goes in its mouth. He felt
like a mouse hemmed in by a ring of cats.
A big rawboned brute of a girl strolled into the circle. She said,
"Dinner's ready." Her voice was loud, strident. It reminded him of
the voices of girls in the honky tonks on Venus. She looked at him
appraisingly as if he were a horse she was about to bid on. "Bring him
into the ship," she said. "The man must be starved."
He was propelled jubilantly into the palatial dining salon of the
wrecked liner. A long polished meturilium table occupied the center of
the floor. Automatic weight distributing chairs stood around it. His
feet sank into a green fiberon carpet. He had stepped back into the
Thirty-fourth Century from the fabulous barbarian past.
With a sigh of relief, he started to sit down. A lithe red-head sprang
forward and held his chair. They all waited politely for him to be
seated before they took their places. He felt silly. He felt like
a captive princess. All the confidence engendered by the familiar
settings of the space ship went out of him like wind. He, Jonathan
Fawkes, was a castaway on an asteroid inhabited by twenty-seven wild
women.
* * * * *
As the meal boisterously progressed, he regained sufficient courage
to glance timidly around. Directly across the table sat a striking,
grey-eyed girl whose brown hair was coiled severely about her head. She
looked to him like a stenographer. He watched horrified as she seized
a whole roast fowl, tore it apart with her fingers, gnawed a leg. She
caught him staring at her and rolled her eyes at him. He returned his
gaze to his plate.
Olga said: "Hey, Sultan."
He shuddered, but looked up questioningly.
She said, "How's the fish?"
"Good," he mumbled between a mouthful. "Where did you get it?"
"Caught it," said Olga. "The stream's full of 'em. I'll take you
fishing tomorrow." She winked at him so brazenly that he choked on a
bone.
"Heaven forbid," he said.
"How about coming with me to gather fruit?" cried the green-eyed
blonde; "you great big handsome man."
"Or me?" cried another. And the table was in an uproar.
The rawboned woman who had summoned them to dinner, pounded the table
until the cups and plates danced. Jonathan had gathered that she was
called Billy.
"Quiet!" She shrieked in her loud strident voice. "Let him be. He can't
go anywhere for a few days. He's just been through a wreck. He needs
rest." She turned to Jonathan who had shrunk down in his chair. "How
about some roast?" she said.
"No." He pushed back his plate with a sigh. "If I only had a smoke."
Olga gave her unruly black hair a flirt. "Isn't that just like a man?"
"I wouldn't know," said the green-eyed blonde. "I've forgotten what
they're like."
Billy said, "How badly wrecked is your ship?"
"It's strewn all over the landscape," he replied sleepily.
"Is there any chance of patching it up?"
He considered the question. More than anything else, he decided, he
wanted to sleep. "What?" he said.
"Is there any possibility of repairing your ship?" repeated Billy.
"Not outside the space docks."
They expelled their breath, but not for an instant did they relax
the barrage of their eyes. He shifted position in embarrassment. The
movement pulled his muscles like a rack. Furthermore, an overpowering
lassitude was threatening to pop him off to sleep before their eyes.
"You look exhausted," said Ann.
Jonathan dragged himself back from the edge of sleep. "Just tired," he
mumbled. "Haven't had a good night's rest since I left Mars." Indeed
it was only by the most painful effort that he kept awake at all. His
eyelids drooped lower and lower.
"First it's tobacco," said Olga; "now he wants to sleep. Twenty-seven
girls and he wants to sleep."
"He is asleep," said the green-eyed blonde.
* * * * *
Jonathan was slumped forward across the table, his head buried in his
arms.
"Catch a hold," said Billy, pushing back from the table. A dozen girls
volunteered with a rush. "Hoist!" said Billy. They lifted him like a
sleepy child, bore him tenderly up an incline and into a stateroom,
where they deposited him on the bed.
Ann said to Olga; "Help me with these boots." But they resisted every
tug. "It's no use," groaned Ann, straightening up and wiping her bright
yellow hair back from her eyes. "His feet have swollen. We'll have to
cut them off."
At these words, Jonathan raised upright as if someone had pulled a rope.
"_Cut off whose feet?_" he cried in alarm.
"Not your feet, silly," said Ann. "Your boots."
"Lay a hand on those boots," he scowled; "and I'll make me another pair
out of your hides. They set me back a week's salary." Having delivered
himself of this ultimatum, he went back to sleep.
Olga clapped her hand to her forehead. "And this," she cried "is what
we've been praying for during the last three years."
The next day found Jonathan Fawkes hobbling around by the aid of a
cane. At the portal of the space ship, he stuck out his head, glanced
all around warily. None of the girls were in sight. They had, he
presumed, gone about their chores: hunting, fishing, gathering fruits
and berries. He emerged all the way and set out for the creek. He
walked with an exaggerated limp just in case any of them should be
hanging around. As long as he was an invalid he was safe, he hoped.
He sighed. Not every man could be waited on so solicitously by
twenty-seven handsome strapping amazons. He wished he could carry it
off in cavalier fashion. He hobbled to the creek, sat down beneath the
shade of a tree. He just wasn't the type, he supposed. And it might be
years before they were rescued.
As a last resort, he supposed, he could hide out in the hills or join
the centaurs. He rather fancied himself galloping across the plains
on the back of a centaur. He looked up with a start. Ann Clotilde was
ambling toward him.
"How's the invalid?" she said, seating herself beside him.
"Hot, isn't it?" he said. He started to rise. Ann Clotilde placed the
flat of her hand on his chest and shoved. "_Ooof!_" he grunted. He sat
down rather more forcibly than he had risen.
"Don't get up because of me," she informed him. "It's my turn to cook,
but I saw you out here beneath the trees. Dinner can wait. Jonathan do
you know that you are irresistible?" She seized his shoulders, stared
into his eyes. He couldn't have felt any more uncomfortable had a
hungry boa constrictor draped itself in his arms. He mopped his brow
with his sleeve.
"Suppose the rest should come," he said in an embarrassed voice.
"They're busy. They won't be here until I call them to lunch. Your
eyes," she said, "are like deep mysterious pools."
"Sure enough?" said Jonathan with involuntary interest. He began to
recover his nerve.
She said, "You're the best looking thing." She rumpled his hair. "I
can't keep my eyes off you."
Jonathan put his arm around her gingerly. "Ouch!" He winced. He had
forgotten his sore muscles.
"I forgot," said Ann Clotilde in a contrite voice. She tried to rise.
"You're hurt."
He pulled her back down. "Not so you could notice it," he grinned.
"Well!" came the strident voice of Billy from behind them. "We're _all_
glad to hear that!"
* * * * *
Jonathan leaped to his feet, dumping Ann to the ground. He jerked
around. All twenty-six of the girls were lined up on the path. Their
features were grim. He said: "I don't feel so well after all."
"It don't wash," said Billy. "It's time for a showdown."
Jonathan's hair stood on end. He felt rather than saw Ann Clotilde take
her stand beside him. He noticed that she was holding her spear at a
menacing angle. She said in an angry voice: "He's mine. I found him.
Leave him alone."
"Where do you get that stuff?" cried Olga. "Share and share alike, say
I."
"We could draw straws for him," suggested the green-eyed blonde.
"Look here," Jonathan broke in. "I've got some say in the matter."
"You have not," snapped Billy. "You'll do just as we say." She took a
step toward him.
Jonathan edged away in consternation.
"He's going to run!" Olga shouted.
Jonathan never stopped until he was back in the canyon leading to the
plain. His nerves were jumping like fleas. He craved the soothing
relaxation of a smoke. There was, he remembered, a carton of cigarettes
at the wreck. He resumed his flight, but at a more sober pace.
At the spot where he and Ann had first crawled away from the centaurs,
he scrambled out of the gulley, glanced in the direction of his space
ship. He blinked his eyes, stared. Then he waved his arms, shouted and
tore across the prairie. A trim space cruiser was resting beside the
wreck of his own. Across its gleaming monaloid hull ran an inscription
in silver letters: "INTERSTELLAR COSMOGRAPHY SOCIETY."
Two men crawled out of Jonathan's wrecked freighter, glanced in
surprise at Jonathan. A third man ran from the cruiser, a Dixon Ray
Rifle in his hand.
"I'm Jonathan Fawkes," said the castaway as he panted up, "pilot for
Universal. I was wrecked."
A tall elderly man held out his hand. He had a small black waxed
mustache and Van Dyke. He was smoking a venusian cigarette in a
yellow composition holder. He said, "I'm Doctor Boynton." He had a
rich cultivated voice, and a nose like a hawk. "We are members of the
Interstellar Cosmography Society. We've been commissioned to make a
cursory examination of this asteroid. You had a nasty crack up, Mr.
Fawkes. But you are in luck, sir. We were on the point of returning
when we sighted the wreck."
"I say," said the man who had run out of the cruiser. He was a prim,
energetic young man. Jonathan noted that he carried the ray gun
gingerly, respectfully. "We're a week overdue now," he said. "If you
have any personal belongings that you'd like to take with you, you'd
best be getting them aboard."
* * * * *
Jonathan's face broke into a grin. He said, "Do any of you know how to
grow tobacco?"
They glanced at each other in perplexity.
"I like it here," continued Jonathan. "I'm not going back."
"What?" cried the three explorers in one breath.
"I'm going to stay," he repeated. "I only came back here after the
cigarettes."
"But it will be three years before the asteroid's orbit brings it back
in the space lanes," said Doctor Boynton. "You don't possibly expect to
be picked up before then!"
Jonathan shook his head, began to load himself with tools, tobacco
seed, and cigarettes.
"Odd." Doctor Boynton shook his head, turned to the others. "Though if
I remember correctly, there was quite an epidemic of hermits during
the medieval period. It was an esthetic movement. They fled to the
wilderness to escape the temptation of _women_."
Jonathan laughed outright.
"You are sure you won't return, young man?"
He shook his head. They argued, they cajoled, but Jonathan was adamant.
He said, "You might report my accident to Universal. Tell them to stop
one of their Jupiter-bound freighters here when the asteroid swings
back in the space ways. I'll have a load for them."
Inside the ship, Doctor Boynton moved over to a round transparent port
hole. "What a strange fellow," he murmured. He was just in time to see
the castaway, loaded like a pack mule, disappear in the direction from
which he had come.
Robinson Crusoe was going back to his man (?) Friday--all twenty-seven
of them.
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