Stories Complete, page 6
Sam winced. “We can’t do that honey. You know we can’t. We don’t have enough money yet.”
“We had the money,” Elvera snapped. “Twice we had the money! And twice you let Doyle Pryor and the rest of those hustlers over at the Tycho Settlement cheat you out of it. Now we own a piece of the moon. That makes me proud—real proud!”
“It wasn’t Pryor’s fault honey. I bought the land from him in a legitimate business deal. It wasn’t his fault that . . .
“That’s the trouble with you,” Elvera interrupted. “Ever since we’ve been married you’ve been a sucker for every get-rich-quick deal that came along. Back on earth it was your gadgets that kept us broke. I thought that was bad. Now you’re buying real estate on the moon! Oh Sam—” Elvera’s voice suddenly broke off to the exaggerated-patience tone he was so familiar with—“there’s nothing here. You admit that. So borrow the fare home. Pryor would lend it to you.”
SAM tugged on his long chin. “There’s the meteorites,” he said. “Only last week Roy Gittens found one on the Mare Nectaris with over six-thousand dollars’ worth of boom-dust in it.”
“There’s meteorites on earth too, Pop,” Raymond said suddenly. “I saw one in a museum once.”
“Meteorites are different there, son,” Sam explained dutifully. “Back on earth, all the valuable metals are burned out before they land. That’s why you see all those holes in them.”
“Why don’t you get your father to find you a shield stone?” Elvera said over her shoulder.
“What’s that, Pop?” Raymond asked.
“Don’t pay any attention to your mother.” Sam said. “She’s just being sarcastic.”
“But what is it?” the boy repeated.
“There’s no such thing, son. It’s just an old legend some of the early spacemen started. A shield stone is supposed to be a meteorite made of a substance that counteracts the force of gravity when it’s heated. The heat is supposed to rearrange the molecules in some way. There’s no such thing as a gravity shield. Probably never will be. It’s just a story someone made up.”
“Gosh, if there was such a thing it would be worth a lot of money, wouldn’t it Pop?”
Sam turned to his wife. “Call me when supper’s ready,” he said. “I’ll be in the workshop.”
The home-made partition where he pursued his hobby was cramped. A wooden table ran the length of the room, and various tools were racked up neatly on the wall. A dozen chunks of rock lay in the center of the floor. Some of them were small meteorites; others, pieces chipped off larger stones. All had one thing in common; they contained no uranium. For five minutes he tried winding an armature on a meteorite analyzer with which he was experimenting. Then, after he snapped the fine wire twice, gave up. Filled with a feeling of complete and utter futility, he sat down at the bench, cupping his chin in the palms of his hands.
Elvera was right. He must have been mad to bring his wife and son a quarter-of-a-million miles from a breath of fresh air while he chipped away at rocks on the moon. The two months he’d intended to stay, had now stretched to seven. And far from bettering his position, he didn’t even have fare home. Elvera was right in many ways. Some men—men like Doyle Pryor—managed each month to hack a small fortune out of the dust pits. But for every Pryor, there were ten like him. They were the men who’d always almost-hit-it—almost, but not quite.
He got up; feeling sorry for himself wouldn’t get the fare home. Mechanically, he unfastened the money belt strapped about his waist. He didn’t have to count it. He knew what was there. Twelve-hundred and fifteen dollars. And fare back to Terra was an even three thousand—an even one thousand dollars a person.
Behind him the partition door slid open. “Come on, eat your supper,” Elvera said.
THE meteorite was a new one. It had fallen just alongside a foot-wide crevice in a small craterlet nicknamed the Borne hole. Sam Tuttle slid off the tractor seat, and stomped through the ankle-deep dust toward it. It was about four feet in diameter, with a projection at one end that looked oddly like a horse’s head. When his face-plate began to cloud up he set down the dial counter making the necessary adjustments with both hands. His vision cleared. He picked up the instrument again, squinting at it through the amber glass.
Abruptly he was aware of a tingling sensation that started at a point directly under his oxygen tank and worked up to his helmet liner . . . He was twenty feet from the stone, and already the counter was wavering between forty and fifty. In one long jump he was alongside the rock . . . two hundred, two fifty . . . He laid the counter down on the halo of gray dust surrounding his find. The needle jumped again—stopping this time against the set screw just past the three-hundred mark.
He’d just started back to the tractor for his digging tools, when from the edge of his eye he noticed a flash of movement. It was above him and riding along the rim of the crater—half hidden from view by the pinnacles of rock inside the ringwall. Even as he watched, it disappeared from view behind the inverted icicles of black rock. It was another tractor, a red one—Pryor’s of course. Doyle Pryor owned this piece of real estate and everything on it—including meteorites. He’d have to act fast. Apparently he hadn’t been seen yet and to be observed examining the stone would be a sure giveaway. In three long strides he covered the hundred feet to the tractor, mounted it, and kicked it into full forward. He was halfway to the base of the crater’s edge when the other vehicle lumbered out from behind the row of spires on the ringwall and started down the natural ramp. Simultaneously, a swishing noise sounded inside his helmet, followed by a human voice: “Hello there. That you Tuttle?”
Sam bit his lip. Beads of sweat he couldn’t rub off rolled down his forehead and into his eyes. “Yeah, Mr. Pryor, it’s me.”
There was a silence on the other end while the red tractor moved down the ramp toward him. Then: “A little out of your territory, aren’t you?”
“Been taking a short cut over to the Landau plain,” Sam lied. “Saves me a six mile trip around the ringwall.”
Pryor’s vehicle pulled up alongside and came to a halt. It was a new job—an International—complete with pressurized cabin and seating space for four people. The airlock swung open. Again Sam was aware of the crackling inside his helmet. “Bounce over for a while, Tuttle,” Pryor said. “Have a smoke. It’ll help take the kinks out of your jumper.”
Sam started to refuse, then changed his mind. A cigarette—even one of Doyle Pryor’s cigarettes—would taste good now. “Coming!” he said.
Pryor slid out from behind the controls when he entered the other vehicle. He was a big man, with heavy jowls and a bristle of beard as black as the bottom of a dark-side crater. Sam took one of the cigarettes from the pack Pryor pushed at him and lit up.
“Any luck?” Pryor asked.
Sam took a deep drag. “No,” he said. “No luck.”
“Heard they had a shower here last night. Thought I’d have a look around.” Pryor said. “See anything that looked interesting?”
Sam shook his head.
PRYOR looked thoughtful. “Funny thing about this strip; must be a jinx or something. In all the time I had it, I never managed to take a buck’s worth of metal out of it.”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Sam said. “I guess you can’t expect to hit on all of them.”
Doyle Pryor squinted out the port. “Funny part of it is, there’s just as much rock falls here as anyplace else. Only I never find any live ones. Least there’s none here by the time I get around to look for them.”
Sam felt a hot flush glowing in the back of his neck. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“It’s my own fault though, I guess,” Pryor went on, ignoring the question. “I just don’t get time to come over here often enough. Think I’ll try to unload this piece as a matter of fact. Now that I’m here, I’ll have a look around, and maybe first thing in the morning, I’ll go over to the Tycho Settlement and see if I can peddle it off.”
Sam Tuttle studied the man’s face, conscious of the wild beating in his own heart. “What are you asking for it?” he said around the lump in his throat.
“Why? You interested?”
“I might be,” Sam said, “if the price was right. After all it’s near home and everything.”
Doyle Pryor leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees. “All right. Tuttle—tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you a real bargain. Just to get it off my hands. I’ll let you have the whole hundred-and-six acres for two-thousand dollars. That takes in the whole crater—right up to the edge of the ringwall.”
“I don’t have that much,” Sam said flatly.
“How close are you ready to go?”
Sam stubbed out the cigarette in the recessed ash tray, allowing his arm to brush against his money belt. “I’ll give you a thousand!” he said suddenly. “Take it or leave it—”
Pryor shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll take it,” he said. “We’ll close the deal tomorrow, over at the Tycho Settlement.”
Sam got up, fumbling with his belt buckle. From underneath the jumper-liner he extracted a sheaf of bills. “We close it now,” he said evenly, “or the deal’s off.”
Pryor edged over to the port, scanning the slate-gray floor of the crater. Without turning, he said, “Seem’s like you’re in an awful hurry. Maybe I should have a look around before I close any deals.”
“Now,” Sam repeated, “or forget about the whole thing?”
From the compartment next to the dashboard, Pryor pulled out a piece of paper and wrote out a temporary bill-of-sale. “I’ll draw up the regular deed soon’s I get over to the settlement,” he said. “When it’s ready, I’ll drop around with it.”
When the money changed hands, Sam Tuttle walked back to the lock door and started to put on his jumper. Just before he dropped the helmet in place, he said, “You won’t mind getting off my land now, will you, Mr. Pryor?”
WITH Pryor’s International, the job of moving the stone would have been a cinch. But Sam Tuttle didn’t have Pryor’s equipment. The rock was awkward—hard to handle because of its shape. Furthermore, the chain-joist had a habit of slipping off the shaft-wheel. It took nearly two hours to dig it loose and get the meteorite securely fastened to the shovel-tail back of the tractor.
The green earth was just resting on the razor-backed ringwall of Clavius, when he nosed over the ridge of hills that flanked the pillbox.
He could see Raymond’s face pressed against the port, watched him turn, and in a moment, Elvera too came to the window. When he opened the inner lock door, Raymond rushed up to meet him. “Let me help you, Pop,” he said.
Quickly, Sam withdrew the footballsized piece of rock he’d chipped from the part of the meteorite that corresponded to the horse’s nose. “Get your gloves, son,” he said.
When the boy returned with the gloves, he placed the stone in the outstretched hands. “Put it on the table in the workshop,” he said.
“Be careful, Raymond.” Elvera was standing in the center of the room watching her son disappear through the door to the shop. Sam went to her and placed both hands on her shoulders. “Hello honey,” he said.
She managed a thin smile. “Is it—is it enough?” she said.
Sam put his arms around her, conscious of the straight black hair brushing against his cheek. “Plenty,” he said. “There’s enough right in this little piece for our fare back home, and over a ton more of it outside.”
“Pop—” Raymond had come back into the room. He stood by the shop door regarding his parents with pointed curiosity. Embarrassed, Elvera broke away from Sam’s embrace. “I’ll start making dinner,” she said.
Sam watched her walk over to the electric stove. Then—with Raymond at his heels—he went into the workshop.
The rock was on the bench where his son had placed it. Gingerly, he picked it up, then set it down again. It was still cold—cold as the deep space from which it had come. From the back of the bench, he secured a counter. The needle jumped wildly.
“Is is worth a lot of money, Pop?” Raymond asked.
Sam nodded abstractedly. There was something odd about the rock. Like most meteorites it contained veins of iron and was quite smooth. But in other places tiny holes punctured its surface. They were perfectly round—almost as if they’d been drilled.
“I heard a story once,” Raymond was saying. “It was about some crook who stuffed a meteorite full of luminous paint and sold it to another fellow for a lot of money. The man who bought that sure was dumb, wasn’t he, Pop?”
An odd ringing sound that all but drowned out his son’s voice was ringing in Sam’s eardrums and a cold-white feeling welled up in his throat. From the tool-rack, he grabbed a thin-faced chisel. Deliberately, he jammed the tool into one of the holes. Felt its point press into something soft—something that the room temperature was just beginning to thaw out.
Sluggishly, a thin river of sparkling liquid spilled onto the workbench. He stepped back, unaware that his movement had knocked his son to the floor.
“Elvera!” he called.
AT THE north end of the corridor-laced honeycomb of pillboxes that make up the Tycho Settlement, Doyle Pryor, sitting at the American Bar, had just finished telling his story for the fourth time. A few of the regular customers guffawed happily. Most of them didn’t. Even in this rugged outpost there were those who failed to find any humor in one of Doyle Pryor’s typical business deals. And curiously enough, Marion Stark, sitting on the adjacent barstool fell into this category.
Perhaps it was an enigma that Marion Stark should be among those to criticize the ethics of anyone. Nevertheless, she was—despite her indecorous occupation by earth standards—a young lady of extremely high principals when it came to business dealings. Furthermore, she was a little drunk, which probably accounted for why Doyle Pryor suddenly found the bottom five inches of Marion’s whisky and fizz-water dribbling down his thick chin.
He got up. Angrily. Wiping his face on the sleeve of his tunic. Marion got up too, a little unsteadily, and knocking the stool over.
“I think it stinks!” Marion said evenly.
Pryor looked stunned for a moment. Then abruptly with his open palm, he struck her sharply across the face. “Why you dirty slut! A fine one you are to tell people how they should run their business!”
Marion gave her head a quick side-wise jerk throwing her blonde curls back over her shoulder. She rubbed a set of red nails over the hurt spot. “It stinks and you stink!” she repeated defiantly. “Who do you think you are that you can go pushing people around?”
Pryor sat down with his back against the bar. “Go way,” he said. “Go way and leave me alone. Bounce over to Huang’s place and try to drum up some business for yourself.”
The girl puckered her red lips into an expression of studied insolence. Methodically, she pushed her index finger against Pryor’s chest and twisted it. “Tell you one thing Buck. My business is a damn sight more respectable than yours. That’s for sure.”
Quickly, before Pryor could answer, she turned away. A little unsteadily she sauntered across the room and disappeared into the south corridor.
Pryor managed a grin at the bartender. “Nice people you let in here, Barney,” he said.
Barney poured out a drink without comment.
“What’s the matter with you?” Pryor said. “You’re supposed to agree with the customers.”
“I do agree with the customers,” Barney said flatly.
“Meaning?”
Barney shrugged.
“You think she’s right and I’m wrong. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Barney set the bottle down in back of the bar.
“Let me tell you something Barney?” Pryor said. “To stay alive on this hunk of rock, you’ve got to be thick-skinned. You got to take the other guy before he takes you. Even a guy like Sam Tuttle—a weak little man who doesn’t belong here in the first place—even he, was out to take me over. Think it over a minute Barney. Tuttle was out to take me, and I took him instead! What’s wrong with that? Suppose that rock had been full of metal? Do you think anyone would feel sorry for me? They would not! They’d be glad to see him take me, cause Tuttle’s a weakling like themselves—a weakling who couldn’t hold on to a million dollars for a week, even if he had it right in his hands!”
Barney rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe you’re right Mr. Pryor.” he said. “It makes sense when you put it that way.”
IN THE comparative seclusion of his workshop, Sam Tuttle sat surrounded by the assortment of gadgets he’d accumulated. Most of them were incomplete-lacking in hard-to-get parts. Others were complete, but of no practical value. All had one thing in common: no market value.
Elvera—after her initial outburst had subsided—settled to a mood of silent hostility. Even Raymond, it seemed, followed his movements around the blister with thinly-veiled contempt. Yet despite the discord encountered within the foot-thick walls of the place he called home, Tuttle was totally lacking in any desire ever to work the pits again. A man could take just so much, then he ceased to care one way or the other. Elvera was right. In all his life, he’d never engaged in a business deal which had been consummated to his advantage. Elvera hadn’t said it exactly that way. Her wording had been a good deal stronger—punctuated with more adjectives. It had also presented a truer picture of him—a picture he wasn’t proud of.
Morosely, he let his eyes wander about the room where the debris of a thousand dreams lay stacked like so much rubbish. In the far corner, almost hidden under a pile of wires lay a broken-down electric motor . . . He’d been rewinding the armature, when . . . He stopped . . . The thought was an impossible one. Impossible because it was too—incredibly simple . . . If it were practical, it surely would have been done before.
Nevertheless, he crossed the room and began tearing into the heap of wires. . . .
