The Past Through Tomorrow (56 page)

“But that’s impossible,” he protested.

“Of course it is. But it’s official. I think we will find that the story is that we were signed on in the morning, paid our bounty money, and had one last glorious luau before we were carried aboard. I seem to recollect some trouble in getting the recruiter to sign us up. Maybe we convinced him by kicking in our bounty money.”

“But we
didn’t
sign up in the morning. It’s not true and I can prove it.”

“Sure you can prove it—
but how can you prove it without going back to Earth first!“

“So you see it’s this way,” Jones decided after some minutes of somewhat fruitless discussion, “there is no sense in trying to break our contracts here and now; they’ll laugh at us. The thing to do is to make money talk, and talk loud. The only way I can see to get us off at Luna City is to post non-performance bonds with the company bank there—cash, and damn big ones, too.”

“How big?”

“Twenty thousand credits, at least, I should guess.”

“But that’s not equitable—it’s all out of proportion.”

“Quit worrying about equity, will you? Can’t you realize that they’ve got us where the hair is short? This won’t be a bond set by a court ruling; it’s got to be big enough to make a minor company official take a chance on doing something that’s not in the book.”

“I can’t raise such a bond.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.”

Wingate wanted to argue the point, but did not. There are times when it is very convenient to have a wealthy friend.

“I’ve got to get a radiogram off to my sister,” Jones went on, “to get this done—”

“Why your sister? Why not your family firm?”

“Because we need fast action, that’s why. The lawyers that handle our family finances would fiddle and fume around trying to confirm the message. They’d send a message back to the Captain, asking if Sam Houston Jones were really aboard, and he would answer ‘No’, as I’m signed up as Sam Jones. I had some silly idea of staying out of the news broadcasts, on account of the family.”

“You can’t blame them,” protested Wingate, feeling an obscure clannish loyalty to his colleagues in law, “they’re handling other people’s money.”

“I’m not blaming them. But I’ve got to have fast action and Sis’ll do what I ask her. I’ll phrase the message so she’ll know it’s me. The only hurdle now is to persuade the Purser to let me send a message on tick.”

He was gone for a long time on this mission. Hartley waited with Wingate, both to keep him company and because of a strong human interest in unusual events. When Jones finally appeared he wore a look of tight-lipped annoyance. Wingate, seeing the expression, felt a sudden, chilling apprehension. “Couldn’t you send it? Wouldn’t he let you?”

“Oh, he let me—finally,” Jones admitted, “but that Purser—man, is he tight!”

Even without the alarm gongs Wingate would have been acutely aware of the grounding at Luna City. The sudden change from the high gravity deceleration of their approach to the weak surface gravity—one-sixth earth normal—of the Moon took immediate toll on his abused stomach. It was well that he had not eaten much. Both Hartley and Jones were deep-space men and regarded enough acceleration to permit normal swallowing as adequate for any purpose. There is a curious lack of sympathy between those who are subject to spacesickness and those who are immune to it. Why the spectacle of a man regurgitating, choked, eyes streaming with tears, stomach knotted with pain, should seem funny is difficult to see, but there it is. It divides the human race into two distinct and antipathetic groups—amused contempt on one side, helpless murderous hatred on the other.

Neither Hartley nor Jones had the inherent sadism which is too frequently evident on such occasions—for example the great wit who suggests salt pork as a remedy—but, feeling no discomfort themselves, they were simply unable to comprehend (having forgotten the soul-twisting intensity of their own experience as new chums) that Wingate was literally suffering “a fate worse than death”—much worse, for it was stretched into a sensible eternity by a distortion of the time sense known only to sufferers from spacesicknesses, seasicknesses, and (we are told) smokers of hashish.

As a matter of fact, the stop on the Moon was less than four hours long. Toward the end of the wait Wingate had quieted down sufficiently again to take an interest in the expected reply to Jones’ message, particularly after Jones had assured him that he would be able to spend the expected lay-over under bond at Luna City in a hotel equipped with a centrifuge.

But the answer was delayed. Jones had expected to hear from his sister within an hour, perhaps before the
Evening Star
grounded at the Luna City docks. As the hours stretched out he managed to make himself very unpopular at the radio room by his repeated inquiries. An over-worked clerk had sent him brusquely about his business for the seventeenth time when he heard the alarm sound preparatory to raising ship; he went back and admitted to Wingate that his scheme had apparently failed.

“Of course, we’ve got ten minutes yet,” he finished unhopefully, “if the message should arrive before they raise ship, the Captain could still put us aground at the last minute. We’ll go back and haunt ’em some more right up to the last. But it looks like a thin chance.”

“Ten minutes—” said Wingate, “couldn’t we manage somehow to slip outside and run for it?”

Jones looked exasperated. “Have you ever tried running in a total vacuum?”

Wingate had very little time in which to fret on the passage from Luna City to Venus. He learned a great deal about the care and cleaning of washrooms, and spent ten hours a day perfecting his new skill. Masters-at-Arms have long memories.

The
Evening Star
passed beyond the limits of ship-to-Terra radio communication shortly after leaving Luna City; there was nothing to do but wait until arrival at Adonis, port of the north polar colony. The company radio there was strong enough to remain in communication at all times except for the sixty days bracketing superior conjunction and a shorter period of solar interference at inferior conjunction. “They will probably be waiting for us with a release order when we ground,” Jones assured Wingate, “and we’ll go back on the return trip of the
Evening Star—
first class, this time. Or, at the very worst, we’ll have to wait over for the
Morning Star
. That wouldn’t be so bad, once I get some credit transferred; we could spend it at Venusburg.”

“I suppose you went there on your cruise,” Wingate said, curiosity showing in his voice. He was no Sybarite, but the lurid reputation of the most infamous, or famous—depending on one’s evaluations—pleasure city of three planets was enough to stir the imagination of the least hedonistic.

“No—worse luck!” Jones denied. “I was on a hull inspection board the while time. Some of my messmates went, though…boy!” He whistled softly and shook his head.

But there was no one awaiting their arrival, nor was there any message. Again they stood around the communication office until told sharply and officially to get on back to their quarters and stand by to disembark, “—and be quick about it!”

“I’ll see you in the receiving barracks, Hump,” were Jones’ last words before he hurried off to his own compartment.

The Master-at-Arms responsible for the compartment in which Hartley and Wingate were billeted lined his charges up in a rough column of two’s and, when ordered to do so by the metallic bray of the ship’s loudspeaker, conducted them through the central passageway and down four decks to the lower passenger port. It stood open; they shuffled through the lock and out of the ship—not into the free air of Venus, but into a sheetmetal tunnel which joined it, after some fifty yards, to a building.

The air within the tunnel was still acrid from the atomized antiseptic with which it had been flushed out, but to Wingate it was nevertheless fresh and stimulating after the stale flatness of the repeatedly reconditioned air of the transport. That, plus the surface gravity of Venus, five-sixths of earth-normal, strong enough to prevent nausea yet low enough to produce a feeling of lightness and strength—these things combined to give him an irrational optimism, an up-and-at-’em frame of mind.

The exit from the tunnel gave into a moderately large room, windowless but brilliantly and glarelessly lighted from concealed sources. It contained no furniture.

“Squaaad—HALT!” called out the Master-at-Arms, and handed papers to a slight, clerkish-appearing man who stood near an inner doorway. The man glanced at the papers, counted the detachment, then signed one sheet, which he handed back to the ship’s petty officer who accepted it and returned through the tunnel.

The clerkish man turned to the immigrants. He was dressed, Wingate noted, in nothing but the briefest of shorts, hardly more than a strap, and his entire body, even his feet, was a smooth mellow tan. “Now men,” he said in a mild voice, “strip off your clothes and put them in the hopper.” He indicated a fixture set in one wall.

“Why?” asked Wingate. His manner was uncontentious but he made no move to comply.

“Come now,” he was answered, still mildly but with a note of annoyance, “don’t argue. It’s for your own protection. We can’t afford to import disease.”

Wingate checked a reply and unzipped his coverall. Several who had paused to hear the outcome followed his example. Suits, shoes, underclothing, socks, they all went into the hopper. “Follow me,” said their guide.

In the next room the naked herd were confronted by four “barbers” armed with electric clippers and rubber gloves who proceeded to clip them smooth. Again Wingate felt disposed to argue, but decided the issue was not worth it. But he wondered if the female labor clients were required to submit to such drastic quarantine precautions. It would be a shame, it seemed to him, to sacrifice a beautiful head of hair that had been twenty years in growing.

The succeeding room was a shower room. A curtain of warm spray completely blocked passage through the room. Wingate entered it unreluctantly, even eagerly, and fairly wallowed in the first decent bath he had been able to take since leaving Earth. They were plentifully supplied with liquid green soap, strong and smelly, but which lathered freely. Half a dozen attendants, dressed as skimpily as their guide, stood on the far side of the wall of water and saw to it that the squad remained under the shower a fixed time and scrubbed. In some cases they made highly personal suggestions to insure thoroughness. Each of them wore a red cross on a white field affixed to his belt which lent justification to their officiousness.

Blasts of warm air in the exit passageway dried them quickly and completely.

“Hold still.” Wingate complied, the bored hospital orderly who had spoken dabbed at Wingate’s upper arm with a swab which felt cold to touch, then scratched the spot. “That’s all, move on.” Wingate added himself to the queue at the next table. The experience was repeated on the other arm. By the time he had worked down to the far end of the room the outer sides of each arm were covered with little red scratches, more than twenty of them.

“What’s this all about?” he asked the hospital clerk at the end of the line, who had counted his scratches and checked his name off a list.

“Skin tests…to check your resistances and immunities.”

“Resistance to what?”

“Anything. Both terrestrial and Venerian diseases. Fungoids, the Venus ones are, mostly. Move on, you’re holding up the line.” He heard more about it later. It took from two to three weeks to recondition the ordinary terrestrial to Venus conditions. Until that reconditioning was complete and immunity was established to the new hazards of another planet it was literally death to an Earth man to expose his skin and particularly his mucous membranes to the ravenous invisible parasites of the surface of Venus.

The ceaseless fight of life against life which is the dominant characteristic of life anywhere proceeds with especial intensity, under conditions of high metabolism, in the steamy jungles of Venus. The general bacteriophage which has so nearly eliminated disease caused by pathogenic microorganisms on Earth was found capable of a subtle modification which made it potent against the analogous but different diseases of Venus. The hungry fungi were another matter.

Imagine the worst of the fungoid-type skin diseases you have ever encountered—ringworm, dhobie itch, athlete’s foot, Chinese rot, saltwater itch, seven year itch. Add to that your conception of mold, of damp rot, of scale, of toadstools feeding on decay. Then conceive them speeded up in their processes, visibly crawling as you watch—picture them attacking your eyeballs, your armpits, the soft wet tissues inside your mouth, working down into your lungs.

The first Venus expedition was lost entirely. The second had a surgeon with sufficient imagination to provide what seemed a liberal supply of salicylic acid and mercury salicylate as well as a small ultraviolet radiator. Three of them returned.

But permanent colonization depends on adaptation to environment, not insulating against it. Luna City might be cited as a case which denies this proposition but it is only superficially so. While it is true that the “lunatics” are absolutely dependent on their citywide hermetically-sealed air bubble, Luna City is not a self-sustaining colony; it is an outpost, useful as a mining station, as an observatory, as a refueling stop beyond the densest portion of Terra’s gravitational field.

Venus is a colony. The colonists breathe the air of Venus, eat its food, and expose their skins to its climate and natural hazards. Only the cold polar regions—approximately equivalent in weather conditions to an Amazonian jungle on a hot day in the rainy season—are tenable by terrestrials, but here they slop barefooted on the marshy soil in a true ecological balance.

Wingate ate the meal that was offered him—satisfactory but roughly served and dull, except for Venus sweet-sour melon, the portion of which he ate would have fetched a price in a Chicago gourmets’ restaurant equivalent to the food budget for a week of a middle-class family—and located his assigned sleeping billet. Thereafter he attempted to locate Sam Houston Jones. He could find no sign of him among the other labor clients, nor any one who remembered having seen him. He was advised by one of the permanent staff of the conditioning station to enquire of the factor’s clerk.