The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (47 page)

John Milke and Oliver Paskell sauntered along Bang-out Row in Merlinville. Recent graduates of Highland Technical Institute, they walked with an assured and casual stride in order to convey an impression of hard-boiled competence. Old-timers on porches along the way stared, then turned and muttered briefly to each other.

John Milke was rubicund, energetic, positive; when he walked his cheeks and tidy little paunch jiggled. Oliver Paskell, who was dark, spare and slight, affected old-style spectacles and an underslung pipe. Paskell was noticeably less brisk than Milke. Where Milke swaggered, Paskell slouched; where Milke inspected the quiet gray men on the porches with a lordly air, Paskell watched from the corner of his eye.

Milke pointed. “Number 432, right there.” He opened the gate and approached the porch with Paskell two steps behind.

A tall bony man sat watching them with eyes pale and hard as marbles.

Milke asked, “You’re Abel Cooley?”

“That’s me.”

“I understand that you’re one of the best outside men on the planet. We’re going out on a prospect trip; we need a good all-around hand, and we’d like to hire you. You’d have to take care of chow, service space-suits, load samples, things like that.”

Abel Cooley studied Milke briefly, then turned his pale eyes upon Paskell. Paskell looked away, out over the swells of naked granite that rolled six hundred miles west and south of Merlinville.

Cooley said in a mild voice, “Where you lads thinking to prospect?”

Milke blinked and frowned. It was his understanding that such questions were more or less taboo, though of course a man had a right to know where his job would take him. “In strict confidence,” said Milke, “we’re going out to Odfars.”

“Odfars, eh?” Cooley’s expression changed not at all. “What do you expect to find out there?”

“Well—Pillson’s Almanac indicates a very high density. Which, as you may know, means heavy metal. Then the Deed Office shows neither claims nor workings on Odfars, so we thought we’d survey the territory before someone beat us to it.”

Cooley nodded slowly. “So you’re going out to Odfars…well, I tell you what to do. Get Three-legged Joe to wait on you. He’ll make you a good hand.”

“Three-legged Joe?” asked Milke in puzzlement. “Where do we find him?”

“He’s out on Odfars now.”

Paskell came closer. “How do we locate him on Odfars?”

Cooley smiled crookedly. “Don’t worry about that. Leave it to Joe. He’ll find you.”

From the house came a dark-skinned man five feet tall and four feet wide. Cooley said, “James, these boys are going prospecting out on Odfars; they’re looking for a flunky. Maybe you’re interested?”

“Not just now, Abel.”

“Maybe Three-legged Joe is the man to see.”

“Can’t beat Three-legged Joe.”

Paskell drew Milke out to the street. “They’re joking.”

Milke said darkly, “No use trying to get work out of those old bums. They get by on their pensions; they don’t want an honest job.”

Paskell said thoughtfully, “Perhaps it’s as well to go out by ourselves; it might be less trouble in the long run. These old-timers don’t understand modern methods. Even if we found a man that satisfied us, we’d have to break him in on the Pinsley generator and the Hurd; he’d have the aerators out of adjustment before we’d been out twice.”

Milke nodded. “There’ll be more work for us, but I think you’re right.”

Paskell pointed. “There’s the other place—Tom Hand’s Chandlery.”

Milke consulted a list. “I hope this doesn’t turn out to be another wild goose chase; we need those extra filters.”

Tom Hand’s Chandlery occupied a large dirty building raised off the ground on four-foot stilts. Milke and Paskell climbed up on the loading platform. A scrawny near-bald man approached from out of the shadows. “What’s the trouble, boys?”

Milke frowned at his list while Paskell stood aside puffing owlishly on his pipe. “If you’ll take us to your technical superintendent,” said Milke, “I think I can explain what we need.”

The old man reached out two dirty fingers. “Lemme see what you want.”

Milke fastidiously moved the list out of reach. “I think I’d better see someone in the technical department.”

The old man said impatiently, “Son, out here we don’t have departments, technical or otherwise. Lemme see what you want. If we got it, I’ll know; if we don’t, I’ll know.”

Milke handed over the list. The old man hissed through his teeth. “You want an ungodly amount of them filters.”

“They keep burning out on us,” said Milke. “I’ve diagnosed the trouble—an extra load on the circuit.”

“Mmph, those things never burn out. You’ve probably been plugging them in backwise. This side here fits against the black thing-a-ma-jig; this side connects to your circuits. Is that how you had ’em?”

Milke cleared his throat. “Well—”

Paskell took the pipe out of his mouth. “No, as a matter of fact we had them in the other way.”

The old man nodded. “I’ll give you three. That’s all you’ll use in a lifetime. Now for this other stuff, we got to go around to the front.”

He led them down a dark aisle, past racks crammed with nameless oddments, into a room split by a scarred wooden counter.

At a table near the door three men sat playing cards; nearby stood the dark thick man called James.

James called in a jocular baritone, “Give ’em a jug of acid for Three-legged Joe, Tom. These boys is going out to prospect Odfars.”

“Odfars, eh?” Tom scrutinized Milke and Paskell with impersonal interest. “Don’t know as I’d try it, boys. Three-legged Joe—”

Milke asked brusquely, “What do we owe you?”

Tom Hand scribbled out a bill, took Milke’s money.

Paskell asked tentatively, “Who is this Three-legged Joe?…A joke? Or is there actually someone out there?”

Tom Hand bent over his cash box. The men at the table snapped cards along the green felt. James had his back turned.

Paskell put the pipe back in his mouth, sucked noisily.

On the way back, Milke said bitterly, “It’s always been the same way; whenever these old-timers have a laugh on a stranger, they play it for all it’s worth…”

“But who or what is Three-legged Joe?”

“Well,” said Milke, “sooner or later, I suppose we’ll find out.”

Odfars ranked fourteenth in a scatter of dead worlds around Sigma Sculptoris, drifting in an orbit so wide that the sun showed like a medium-distant street lamp.

Paskell gingerly handled the controls, while Milke scanned the face of the planet with radar peaked to highest sensitivity. Milke pointed to a mirror-smooth surface winding like a fjord between axe-headed crags. “Look there, an ideal landing site—perfect!”

Paskell said doubtfully, “It looks like a chain of lakes.”

“That’s what it is—lakes of quicksilver.” Milke turned Paskell a chiding glance. “It’s absolute zero down there; it can’t help but be solid, if that’s what’s on your mind.”

“True,” said Paskell. “But it has a peculiar soft look to it.”

“If it’s liquid,” scoffed Milke, “I’ll eat your hat.”

“If it’s liquid,” said Paskell, “neither one of us will eat—ever again. Well—here goes.”

The impact of landing substantiated Milke’s position. He ran to the port, looked out. “Hmmph, can’t see anything in this dark without booster goggles. In any event, we’ll have a good level floor for our assay tent.”

Paskell saw in his mind’s eye a page from Hade’s Manual:
“The assay tent is customarily a balloon of plastic film maintained by air pressure. Its use eliminates noxious, acrid or poisonous fumes inside the ship, formerly a source of great annoyance. Certain authorities advise a field survey before bringing out the tent; others maintain that erecting the tent first will facilitate examination of samples taken on the survey, and I generally favor the latter practice.”

Milke said off-handedly, “Some of the boys like to wait before they put up their bubble; others set it out first thing to give them a place to drop off their samples. I generally like to get it up and out of the way.”

“Yes, yes,” said Paskell. “Let’s get it up.”

In space-suits, with booster goggles over their eyes, they left the ship. Paskell looked across the quicksilver lake, up into the jutting rock—icy bright and black through the booster goggles. The lake gleamed like buffed nickel, terminating nearby in a long finger pointing up a defile. In the direction opposite it dropped off around the curve of the horizon.

Paskell said in a tone of dubious humor, “I don’t see Three-legged Joe anywhere.”

Milke’s snort sounded loud in the earphones.

“He’s supposed to know we’re here.”

Milke said crisply, “Let’s get to work.”

From an exterior locker they took the assay tent, carried it fifty feet across the quicksilver to the length of the air hose. Milke turned the valve; the tent swelled into a half-sphere fifteen feet in diameter.

Milke tested the lock with a deftness attained on lunar field trips. He squeezed the lock compartment against the tent, forcing the enclosed air into the tent through a flap valve; then entering the lock, he sealed the outside entry, opened the inside valve, letting the compartment fill with air, and entered the tent.

“Works fine,” he told Paskell confidently. “Let’s get the equipment.”

From the locker they brought the knock-down bench, carried it inside through the lock. Milke brought out a rack of reagents and the pulverizer. Paskell carried out the furnace, then went into the ship for the spectroscope.

“That should be good for a while,” said Milke. He shot a glance up at distant Sigma Sculptoris. “It’s a six hour day here—about two hours of light left. Feel like taking a quick look around?”

“It might be a good idea.” Paskell fingered the empty loop at his belt. “I think I’ll get my gun.”

Milke chuckled. “There’s nothing alive here; it’s a vacuum, absolute zero. You’ve let that talk of Three-legged Joe get you down.”

“Quite right,” said Paskell. “In any event, I’ll feel better with my gun.”

Milke followed him into the ship. “Might as well get in the habit of wearing the thing.” He holstered his own gun.

They set out across the lake, past the tent, up the narrow finger of quicksilver, into the defile. “Strange stuff,” said Paskell chipping a fragment from the cliff. “Looks like chalk—gray chalk.”

“Can’t be chalk,” said Milke. “Chalk is sedimentary.”

“Whatever it is,” said Paskell, “it’s still strange stuff, and it still looks like chalk.”

The fissure widened, the cliffs fell away almost at once; another quicksilver lake spread before them. “Makes for easy walking,” observed Milke. “Better than scrambling through the rocks.”

Paskell eyed the mirror-like surface which wound like a glacier past alternating bluffs, and in a perceptible curve over the horizon. “It might easily be connected all the way around.”

Milke motioned to him. “See that pink stone? Rhodochrosite. And look down at the end—somehow it’s been fused and reduced, leaving the pure metal.”

“Very encouraging,” said Paskell.

“Encouraging?” boomed Milke. “Why it’s downright wonderful! If we found nothing else but this one vein, we’re made…perhaps it might even be economical to mine the quicksilver…”

Paskell glanced at the sun, “There’s not much daylight left; perhaps—”

“Oh, just around the next bend,” said Milke. “It’s easy walking.” He pointed ahead to a massive knob of shiny black material projecting from the crag. “Look at that knob of galena—interesting.”

Paskell felt a throb and hum at his side. He looked down to the dial, stopped short, walked to the left, turned, walked back to the right. He looked up toward the knob of shiny black rock. “That’s not galena, that’s pitchblende.”

“By Jove,” breathed Milke reverently, “you’re right! As big as the Margan-Annis strike…Oliver, my boy, we’re made.”

Paskell said with a puckered brow, “I can’t understand why the planet hasn’t been developed…” He glanced nervously up into the deep shadows, perceptibly lengthening. “I wonder—”

“Three-legged Joe?” Milke laughed. “Fairy-tale stuff.” He looked at Paskell. “What’s the matter?”

Paskell said in a husky whisper, “Feel the ground.”

Milke stood stock-still.

Thud-bump. Thud-bump. Thud-bump
.

The sun dropped behind a crag; even the boosters found no light in the sudden shade. “Come on,” said Paskell. He turned, paced hurriedly back up the lake.

“Wait for me,” said Milke breathlessly.

At the ridge of chalky rock which divided the two lakes, they paused, looked back. The ground felt solid, immobile under their feet.

“Strange,” said Milke.

“Very strange,” said Paskell.

They crossed the ridge; the hulk of their ship caught the last flat rays from Sigma Sculptoris.

Paskell came to a sudden halt. Milke stared at him, then followed his gaze. “Our assay tent!”

They ran forward to where the fabric lay in a crumpled heap. “There’s been a hole cut in it,” muttered Paskell.