Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (21 page)

Paskell blinked owlishly. “There is no natural field to this planet. I checked immediately.”

Milke threw up his hands. “Go to it, Oliver. It’s your party.”

Milke and Paskell stood contemplating the defile, across which, at the height of their eyes, dangled a rude cable. Near the lake, the cable passed through a long box, from which came leads running to the generator inside the ship.

Paskell said solemnly, “There’s a trillion amps running through the cable.”

“A few more,” said Milke, “it’ll swell like a poisoned pup.”

“There is a practical limit,” admitted Paskell. “At absolute zero the resistance of super-conductive
metals is infinitesimal, but still is greater than nothing. When the cable carries a load that generates heat faster than the heat radiates off, the temperature in the cable rises until it reaches the lower limit of super-conductivity.”

“And then?”

Paskell flung up his arms. “No more cable.”

Milke regarded his handiwork anxiously. “Perhaps we’d better check.”

“How? We don’t have a thermocouple aboard that sensitive.”

Milke shrugged. “All we can do then is hope.”

“Right. Hope that Joe comes down that pass before the cable goes.” He looked up at the sun. “Still an hour or two of light.”

Milke said doubtfully, “The set-up doesn’t look very lethal. Suppose Joe grabs the cable and breaks it, and nothing happens—what then?”

“Something’s got to happen. We’re feeding a constant two thousand watts into that circuit. When Joe breaks the cable those watts have to go somewhere—they just don’t evaporate. They keep on going—through Joe. And if Joe doesn’t feel it, I’ll personally go after him with a pocket-knife
.”

Milke turned Paskell a surprised glance: strong talk from modest Oliver Paskell.

Paskell was restlessly beating his hands together. “We’re forgetting something.”

Milke turned, looked toward the ship.

“Ah, yes,” said Paskell.

Milke made a strange noise. His arm jerked up.

“The bait,” said Paskell. “We want to set out some acid.”

“Never mind the bait,” rasped Milke. “We’re the bait…Joe’s behind us…”

Paskell sprang around. Three-legged Joe stood in front of the ship
looking at them.

“Run,” said Milke. “Up under the cable…And
if it doesn’t work—God help us…”

Three-legged Joe came forward, like a one-legged man on crutches
.

Paskell stood frozen. “Run!” screamed Milke. He darted back, seized Paskell’s arm.

Paskell broke into a shambling run.

“Faster,” panted Milke. “He’s gaining on us.”

Paskell ran to the mountainside, tried to claw his way up the sheer rock.

“No, no!” yelled Milke. “Through the defile!”

Paskell turned, ducked under one of Joe’s enormous arms, scuttled toward the defile.

Milke tackled him. “Under the cable—not through!
Under!”
He grabbed Paskell’s legs, drew him under the cable. Three-legged Joe ambled casually after them.

Paskell rose to his feet, looked wildly around. “Easy,” said Milke. “Easy…”

Cautiously they backed up the defile. Milke panted, “No use running now. If your contraption doesn’t work, we might as well reconcile ourselves to death.”

Paskell asked suddenly, “Did you turn on the generator?”

Milke froze. “The generator? Inside the ship? You mean the power out to the circuit?”

“Yes, the generator…”

“No, didn’t you?”

“I
don’t remember!”

Milke
said despairingly, “You’ll know in a minute. Here comes Joe—”

Three-legged Joe paused by the cable. He
walked forward. The cable touched his chest. He lifted up his arms. “Close your eyes,” cried Paskell.

The sudden glare spattered darts of light through their eyelids.

“You turned on the generator,
“ said Milke.

Three-legged Joe lay forty feet distant, twitching feebly.

“He’s not dead,” muttered Paskell.

Milke stood looking down at the silver-gray hulk. “We can’t cut him up. We can’t tie him. We can’t…”

Paskell ran to the ship. “Get out the grapples.”

Returning from the Merlinville Deed Office, Milke and Paskell stepped into Tom Hand’s Chandlery for a new tent and a replacement set of reagents.

Lounging at the table were Abel Cooley and his friend James. “Ah, here’s the prospectors back from Odfars,” said Cooley.

Tom Hand limped forward. His eyes were red, there was alcohol on his breath, and a series of black and blue bruises showed on one side of his face. “Well, young fellow,” he said to Milke in a thick voice, “what’ll it be?”

“First, we need a new assay tent.”

From the table by the window came a chuckle. James called out in his jocular baritone, “Three-legged Joe maybe tried to bunk in with you?”

Milke made a noncommittal gesture; Paskell sucked at his pipe.

Tom Hand said, “Pick up your tent out on the loading platform. What else?”

“A set of assay reagents.” Milke handed over a list.

Tom Hand looked at them from under his eyebrows. “You boys still going out prospecting?”

“Certainly. Why not?”

“I should think maybe you had a bellyful
.”

Milke shrugged. “Odfars wasn’t too bad. We never expected an easy life from prospecting. Joe gave us a pretty hard time, but we took care of him.”

Hand leaned forward, red eyes blinking. “What’s that?”

“We don’t mind letting it out. We’ve got everything in sight sewed up and recorded
.”

Abel Cooley said, “You took care of Joe, did you? Talk him to death maybe?”

“No. He’s still alive. We’ve got him where he can’t get away. A research team from the Institute is coming out to look him over.”

James stepped forward. “You’ve got him where he can’t get away? I’ve seen Joe break out of a net of two-inch
cable like it was string. We blasted a mountain down on top of his cave. Twenty minutes later he pushes
his way out…Now you tell me you’ve got him where he can’t get away.”

“Right,” murmured Paskell. “Exactly right.”

Milke turned to Tom Hand. “Give us about a hundred gallons of hydrogen peroxide, two hundred gallons of alcohol.”

“We’ve got to keep Joe alive,” Paskell told James
.

Abel Cooley snorted. “Hogwash.”

Tom Hand shrugged, turned away into the recesses of his shop.

James said, in an oil-smooth voice, “Suppose you break down and tell us just what you did to poor old Three-legged Joe.”

“Why not?” said Paskell. “But I’m warning you—stay away from him.”

“Never mind the jokes…I’m still listening.”

“Well, first we electrocuted Joe. It stunned him.”

“Yeah?”

“We couldn’t kill him or tie him—so while he was still twitching, we threw grapples around his leg, hoisted him twenty miles out into space and gave him an
orbit around Odfars. That’s where he is now—alive and well and feeling rather foolish, I should
imagine.”

James pulled at his chin. He looked at Abel Cooley. “What do you think, Abel?” he asked.

Abel Cooley snorted, looked out the window.

James sat down by the table. “Yes,” he said heavily, “Three-legged Joe
is
feeling rather foolish, I expect.”

“About like the rest of you birds,” came Tom Hand’s voice from behind the shelves.

Afterword to “Three-Legged Joe”

Long, long ago, when I was afflicted with wanderlust—in fact even as a boy of twelve or fourteen—I longed to drift down the Danube in a
Faltboot
from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea. I consulted maps, books, although nothing ever came of this project. There is a phrase that sticks in my memory, even while its provenance eludes me: “Far-off places with sweet-sounding
names”. I had my own list of such names: Timbuktu, Kashmir, Bali, Tahiti, Vienna, Venice…Norma and I tried to touch in at these places over the years. The only one that we missed was Timbuktu…we were close on that, at Bamako, but wisdom prevailed, and Norma and I returned home before our money ran out.

As should now be apparent, much of my work was produced while Norma, John and I inhabited some agreeable location here and there about the world. I planned this system when I was still very young, before I had written anything, and by some freak of circumstance it worked out. Of course, an equal or greater amount of my writing was done at home—I have no way of measuring this.

—Jack Vance

DP!

An old woodcutter woman, hunting mushrooms up the north fork of the Kreuzberg, raised her eyes and saw the strangers. They came step by step through the ferns, arms extended, milk-blue eyes blank as clam shells. When they chanced into patches of sunlight, they cried out in hurt voices and clutched at their naked scalps, which were white as ivory, and netted with pale blue veins.

The old woman stood like a stump, the breath scraping in her throat. She stumbled back, almost falling at each step, her legs moving back to support her at the last critical instant. The strange people came to a wavering halt, peering through sunlight and dark-green shadow. The woman took an hysterical breath, turned, and put her gnarled old legs to flight.

A hundred yards downhill she broke out on a trail; here she found her voice. She ran, uttering cracked screams and hoarse cries, lurching from side to side. She ran till she came to a wayside shrine, where she flung herself into a heap to gasp out prayer and frantic supplication.

Two woodsmen, in leather breeches and rusty black coats, coming up the path from Tedratz, stared at her in curiosity and amusement. She struggled to her knees, pointed up the trail. “Fiends from the pit! Walking in all their evil; with my two eyes I’ve seen them!”

“Come now,” the older woodsman said indulgently. “You’ve had a drop or two, and it’s not reverent to talk so at a holy place.”

“I saw them,” bellowed the old woman. “Naked as eggs and white as lard; they came running at me waving their arms, crying out for my very soul!”

“They had horns and tails?” the younger man asked jocularly. “They prodded you with their forks, switched you with their whips?”

“Ach, you blackguards! You laugh, you mock; go up the slope, and see for yourself…Only five hundred meters, and then perhaps you’ll mock!”

“Come along,” said the first. “Perhaps someone’s been plaguing the old woman; if so, we’ll put him right.”

They sauntered on, disappeared through the firs. The old woman rose to her feet, hobbled as rapidly as she could toward the village.

Five quiet minutes passed. She heard a clatter; the two woodsmen came running at breakneck speed down the path. “What now?” she quavered, but they pushed past her and ran shouting into Tedratz.

Half an hour later fifty men armed with rifles and shotguns stalked cautiously back up the trail, their dogs on leash. They passed the shrine; the dogs began to strain and growl.

“Up through here,” whispered the older of the two woodsmen. They climbed the bank, threaded the firs, crossed sun-flooded meadows and balsam-scented shade.

From a rocky ravine, tinkling and chiming with a stream of glacier water, came the strange, sad voices.

The dogs snarled and moaned; the men edged forward, peered into the meadow. The strangers were clustered under an overhanging ledge, clawing feebly into the dirt.

“Horrible things!” hissed the foremost man, “Like great potato-bugs!” He aimed his gun, but another struck up the barrel. “Not yet! Don’t waste good powder; let the dogs hunt them down. If fiends they be, their spite will find none of us!” The idea had merit; the dogs were loosed. They bounded forward, full of hate. The shadows boiled with fur and fangs and jerking white flesh.

One of the men jumped forward, his voice thick with rage. “Look, they’ve killed Tupp, my good old Tupp!” He raised his gun and fired, an act which became the signal for further shooting. And presently, all the strangers had been done to death, by one means or another.

Breathing hard, the men pulled off the dogs and stood looking down at the bodies. “A good job, whatever they are, man,
beast, or fiend,” said Johann Kirchner, the innkeeper. “But there’s the point! What are they? When have such creatures been seen before?”