The Luck of Ignatz, page 1
THE LUCK OF IGNATZ
By Lester del Rey
Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1939 - Novelette
Illustrations by Gilmore
THE LUCK OF IGNATZ
By Lester del Rey
MAYBE it was superstition, but Ignatz knew it was all his fault. For the last three days, Jerry Lord had sat in that same chair, his eyes conjuring up a vision of red hair and a dimple on the wall, and there was nothing Ignatz could do about it.
He grumbled his unhappiness, dug his tail into the carpet, and shoved forward on his belly-plate until his antennae touched the Master’s ankle. For the hundredth time he tried to mumble human words, and failed. But Jerry sensed his meaning and reached down absently to rub the horn on his snout.
“Ignatz,” the Master mumbled, “did I tell you Anne star-hops on the Burgundy tonight? Bound for South Venus.” He sucked on his cold pipe, then tossed it aside in disgust. “Pete Durnall’s to guide her through Hellonfire swamps.”
It was no news to Ignatz, who’d heard nothing else for the last three days, but he rumbled sympathetically in his foghorn voice. In the rotten inferno north of Hellas, any man who knew the swamps could be a hero to a mudsucker. Even veteran spacemen were usually mudsuckers on Venus, and Anne was Earthbound up to now.
Ignatz knew those swamps—none better. He’d lived there some hundred odd years until the Master caught him for a mascot. Oh, the swamp animals were harmless enough, most of them, but Anne wouldn’t think so when she saw them. She’d screamed the first time she saw him; even a Venusian zloaht, or snail-lizard, was horrible to an Earth-man ; the other fauna were worse.
But the memory of the swamps suggested heat to Ignatz. He crawled up the portable stove and plunked down into a pan of boiling water; after a few minutes, when the warmth took full effect, he relaxed comfortably on the bottom to sleep. Jerry’d have to solve his own problems, since he couldn’t learn zloaht language. What was the sense of solving problems if he couldn’t boast about it?
There was a thud and clank outside, and a chorus of shrieks rent the air. By the time Ignatz was fully awake, a man was pounding on the door, grumbling loudly. Jerry threw it open, and the hotel manager plunked in, face red and temper worse.
“Know what that was?” he shrieked. “Number two elevator broke the cable— brand-new it was, too. Stuck between floors, and we’ve got to cut through with a blow torch. Now!”
“So what? I didn’t do it.” The old weariness in Jerry’s voice was all too familiar to Ignatz. He knew? what was coming.
“No, you didn’t do it; you didn’t do it. But you were here.” The red face turned livid, and the fat chest heaved convulsively. He threshed his fist in front of Jerry’s face, and shrilled out in a quavering falsetto: “Don’t think I haven’t heard of you. I felt sorry for you, took you in for only double rates, and look what happens. Well, I’m through. Out you go—hear me ? Out, now, at once!”
Jerry shrugged. “O. K.” He watched with a detached interest as Ignatz climbed out of the pan, and dropped over onto the manager’s leg. With a wild shriek of confused profanity, the man jerked free and out. He went scurrying down the hall, his fat hands rubbing at the burned flesh.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Ignatz,” Jerry remarked mildly. “He’ll probably have blisters where you touched him. But it’s done now, so go cool off and help me pack.” He put a pan of cold water on the floor and began opening closets and dragging out clothes. Ignatz climbed into the water and let his temperature drop down to a safe limit, considering this latest incident ruefully.
NOT that there was anything novel about it; the only wonder was that they had been in the hotel almost a week before it happened. And it was all his fault; he never did anything, but he was there, and trouble followed blissfully after. Of course, Jerry Lord should have known better than to catch a snail-lizard, but he did it, and things started.
The luckiest man in the star fleet, the Master had been head tester for the new rocket models until the O. M. decided he needed a rest and sent him to Venus.
Any normal man would have been killed when the ship cracked up over the swamps, but Jerry came walking into Hellas with two hundred ounces of gold under one arm and Ignatz under the other.
Naturally, the Venusians had warned him. They knew, and had known for generations, that it was good luck to have a zloaht around in the swamps, but horribly bad outside. The members of Ignatz’s tribe were plain Jonahs, back to the beginning. Ignatz knew it, too, and tried to get away; but by the time they were well out of the swamps, he liked the Master too well to leave.
To any other man, Ignatz would have spelled personal bad luck, with general misfortune left over. But Jerry’s personal luck held out; instead of getting trouble himself, others around him were swamped with it. The test ships cracked up, one after another, while Jerry got away without a scratch. Too many cracked up, and the O. M. gave Jerry another vacation, this time a permanent one.
His reputation waxed great, and doors closed silently but firmly before him. ‘‘Sorry, Mr. Lord, we’re not taking on new men this year.” They weren’t to be blamed; hadn’t something gone wrong by the time he left the office—not just something, but everything? Nowadays, an ambulance followed casually wherever he went walking with Ignatz, and some innocent bystander usually needed it.
Then Jerry met Anne Barclay, and the inevitable happened. Anne was the O. M.’s daughter, and as cute a yard engine as ever strode down the training field of the Six World Spaceport. Jerry took one look at her, said “Ah,” and developed a fever. He still had some of his money left, and he could dance, even if the orchestra always missed their cues when he was on the floor. By the time he’d known her three weeks, she was willing to say yes; that is, she was until the O. M. put her wise. Then she remembered that she’d lost the ring her mother had given her, had tooth trouble, sinus trouble, and a boil on her left shoulder, all since she met Jerry. With the O. M. helping her imagination along, she did a little thinking about what married life might lead to; they decided that a little trip to Venus, with Pete Durnall, the Old Man’s favorite, was just the answer, and that Jerry could cool his heels and rot.
Not that they were superstitious, any more than all star-jumpers and their daughters were; Ignatz understood that. But when too many coincidences happen, it begins to look a bit shady. Now she was gone, or at least going, and Jerry was going out on his ear, from her life and from the hotel. Ignatz swore lustily in lizard language, and crawled out of the pan. He rolled over in a towel, then began helping Jerry pack—a simple thing, since most of Jerry’s wardrobe rested comfortable in old Ike’s pawnshop.
“We’ll go to the dock,” Jerry decided. “I’m practically broke, fellow, so we’ll sleep in a shed or an outbuilding if we can slip past the watch. Tomorrow I’ll look for work again.”
He’d been looking for work for months, any work, but the only job he knew was handling the star-jumpers, or spaceships: and they had enough natural bad luck without adding Luckless Jerry to the crew. Ignatz wondered what the chances of finding open garbage pails around the dock were, but he followed meekly enough.
A RAW steam pipe led around the shed with the loose lock at the rear. It happened to be super-hot steam, so Ignatz’s sleep was heavy and dreamless, and daylight came and went unknown. The first thing he knew was when Jerry knocked him down and dipped him in a cold puddle to wake him up. At least, it smelled like Jerry, though the face and clothes were all wrrong.
The Master grinned down at Ignatz as the water fizzed and boiled. Over night, apparently, he had grown a beard, and his straight hair was a mass of ringlets. Over one eye a scar ran down to his mouth, and pulled his lips up into a rough caricature of a smile; and the face was rough and brown, while his clothes might have been pulled off a refuse truck.
“Pretty slick, eh, Ignatz?” he asked. “Old Ike fixed me up for my watch and ring.” He picked the zloaht up and chucked him into a traveling bag. “We can’t let them see you now, so you’ll have to stay under cover till we hit berth.”
Ignatz hooted questioningly, and Jerry chuckled. “Sure, we’ve got a job —keeping the bearings oiled on a space-hopper. Remember that old tramp who was sleeping in here last night? Well, he’d been a star-jumper till the weed hit him, and his papers were still clear. I got them for practically nothing, had Ike fix me up, and went calling today. Our luck’s changed again. We’re riding out tonight, bound for Venus!’’
Ignatz grunted again. He might have known where they were bound for.
“Sure.” Jerry was cocky again, banking on his luck. “Not another grunt from you, fellow. I can’t take any chances on this trip.”
The zloaht settled down on the clothes in the bag and chewed slowly on a piece of leather he’d found outside. Anything might happen now, but he had ideas of what that anything might be. The bag jerked and twisted as the Master slipped, past the guards and out onto the rocket field where the hiss of rockets told Ignatz some ship was warming up, testing her exhaust. He stuck his eye to a crack in the bag and peered out.
It was an old freighter, but large and evidently well kept. They were moving the derricks back and battening down the hatches, so the cargo was all aboard.
From the smell he decided they were carrying raisins, peanuts and chocolate, all highly prized by the spore prospectors on Venus. Venus grew little that equaled old Earth foods, and only the most concentrated rations could be carried by those wandering adventurers.
As he watched, Ignatz saw a big tanker run out on the tracks and the hose tossed over to fill the tanks with deuterium oxide for the atomic converters to burn into power; the beryllium was already in, apparently. Mechanics were scurrying around, inspecting the long ion blast tubes, and the field was swarming with airscrew tugs ready to pull the big freighter up where her blast could shoot out harmlessly and her air fins get a grip on the air.
These big freighters were different from the sleek craft that carried the passengers; the triangles were always neatly balanced on their jets, but the freighter was helpless in the grip of a planet unless buoyed up by the tugs until she reached a speed where the stubby fins supported her.
Evidently the Master had made it barely in time, for the crew plank was being unhitched. He ran up it, presented his papers, and was ordered to his berth. As he turned to leave, there was a halloo from below, and the plank was dropped again. Blane, the freighter’s captain, leaned over, swearing.
“Supercargo! Why can’t he take a liner? All right, we’ll wait for him twenty minutes.” He stumped up the stairs to the conning turret, and words drifted down sulphurously. “Every damned thing’s gone wrong on this trip. I’m beginning to think there’s a Jonah in the crew.”
Jerry waited to hear no more, but moved to his berth—a little tin hole in the wall, with a hard bunk, a pan of water, and a rod for his clothes. He tested the oxygen helmet carefully, nodded his satisfaction, and stretched out on the bunk.
“You stay there, Ignatz,” he ordered, “and keep quiet. There might be an inspection. I’ll let you out when I go on second shift. Anyway, there isn’t a steam pipe in the hole, so it wouldn’t do you any good.”
THE PORT above was closing with a heavy bang. “Supercargo must have come up early. Wonder who he was? Must have been somebody important to hold Blane waiting for him—friend of the O. M.‘s I guess.” He grinned comfortably, then wiped it off his face as a shout came down the stairwell.
“Hey, down there! Bring up some tools, and make it snappy. The crew port’s stuck, and we’re taking off in five minutes.”
Jerry swore, and Ignatz turned over with a disgruntled snort. “Well,” the Master reflected, “at least I won’t get the blame for it this time. But it’s funny, all the same. Darned funny!”
Ignatz agreed. This promised to be an interesting voyage, if they ever reached Venus at all. If the Master had to keep a zloaht for a pet, he might have stayed on the ground where their necks would have been safe, instead of running off on this crazy chase after, a girl. For once he was glad that Venus knew no sex—unless the incubator cows were called females.
Jerry let Ignatz out when he came back from shift. He was tired and grouchy, but nothing had gone wrong, in particular. There had been two minor accidents, and one of the tenders had his foot smashed by a loose coupling, but a certain amount of that had to be expected. At least no one had accused him of causing trouble.
“I found out who the supercargo is,” he told the zloaht. “Nobody but the Old Man himself. So you lie low, and I’ll keep out of his way. The old buzzard has eyes like a hawk, and nobody ever called his memory bad.”
The works of Robert Burns were unknown to Ignatz, but he did know the gist of the part that goes: “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley.” Pie waited results with foreboding, and they came when Jerry’s next shift was half through.
It was the O. M. himself who opened the door and turned to a pair of brawny wipers. “All right, bring him in here, and lock the door. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t care. We can find that out later; but I do know he isn’t the man his card says. That fellow has been rotten with weed for ten years.
“And Captain Blane,” he addressed the officer as they tossed Jerry on the bunk, “in the future inspect your men more carefully. I can’t make a tour of inspection on every freighter, you know. Maybe there’s no harm in him, but I don’t want men working for me on fake cards.”
As they locked the door and v/ent down the hall, the captain’s voice was placating, the O. M. raving in a soft voice that fooled nobody by its mildness. Ignatz crawled out from under the bunk, climbed up the rail, and nuzzled Jerry soothingly.
Jerry spat with disgust. “Oh, he came down, pottered around the generator room and wanted to see my card; said he didn’t know any oiler with a scar. Then Hades broke loose, and he yelled for Blane. Anyway, he didn’t recognize me. Thank the Lord Harry, you had enough sense to duck, or my goose would have been cooked.”
Ignatz rooted around and rubbed the horn on his snout lightly against the Master’s chest. Jerry grinned sourly.
“Sure, I know. We haven’t sunk yet, and we’re not going to. Go on away, fellow, and let me think. There must be some way of getting off this thing after we reach Venus.”
Ignatz changed the “after” to “if” in his mind, but he crawled back dutifully and tried to sleep; it was useless. In half an hour Captain Blane rattled on the door and stalked in, his face pointing to “Cold and stormy.” There was an unpleasant suggestion in the way he studied Jerry.
“Young fellow/’ he barked, “if the Old Man didn’t have plans for you, I’d rip you in three pieces and strew you all over this cabin. Call that damned zloaht of yours out and take off those whiskers, Jerry Lord.”
The Master grunted, as a man does after a blow to the stomach. “What makes you think I’m Lord?”
“Think? There’s only one Jonah that big in the star fleet. Since you came aboard, every blamed thing’s been one big mess. The O. M. comes on board as supercargo, the port sticks, three men get hurt fitting a new injector, I find Martian sand worms in the chocolate, and the O. M. threatens to yank my stars. Don’t tell me you’re anyone else!” He poked under the bunk. “Come out of there, you blasted zloaht!” Ignatz came, with a rueful honk at Jerry, who pulled his false beard anxiously. “Well, captain, what if I am? Does the O. M. know?”
“Of course not, and he better hadn’t. If he found I’d shipped you with the crew, I’d never draw berth again. When we hit Venus, I’ll try to let you out in a ’chute at the mile limit. Or would you rather stay and let the Old Man figure out ways and means?”
Jerry shook his head. “Let me out on your ’chute,” he agreed hastily. “I don’t care how, as long as I get free to Venus.”
Blane nodded. “I’ll catch hell anyway, but I’d rather not have you around when we land. I never did trust my luck when a ship breaks up.” He pointed at Ignatz. “Keep that under cover. If the O. M. finds out who you are, I’ll put you off in a lead suit, without a ’chute. Savvy, mister ?”
Jerry savvied plenty- He motioned Ignatz back under the bunk, and moved over to the shelf where his grub lay.
Blane turned to go. And then raw Hades broke loose.
THERE was a sick jarring, and a demon’s siren seemed to go off in their ears. The shelf jumped across the room; Jerry hit the captain with his head. For a half second, there was complete silence, followed by bedlam, while the ship jerked crazily under their feet. Acting on instinct, both the captain and Master dashed for the oxygen helmet, and a private war started before either realized what had happened.
Jerry straightened up first. “That was the control engine,” he yelled in Blane’s ear. The man couldn’t hear, but he caught the idea. “Get out of here and find out what happened.”
There was no thought of prisoners. Jerry pounded along at the captain’s heels/and Ignatz had only time to make a convulsive leap and slide down Jerry’s neck under his jacket. Men were swarming down the stairwell and up from the main rocket rooms. A babble of voices blended with a shrilling of alarms and a thud of feet on cuproberyl decks.
The Old Man was in the engine room before them. “Blane! Blane— Hey, somebody find that lunkhead before these fools wreck the whole ship!”
Blane saluted roughly, his mouth open, his eyes darting about the wreck of the steering engine. “Ha-ha—what happened?”
One quick glance had told Jerry. “Which one of you oilers let the main bearing run dry ?”
A wiper pointed silently to a shapeless hump of bones and assorted cold cuts. While eyes turned that way, Ignatz slipped out and pushed from sight between a post and wall that were still partly whole.
