The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (20 page)

“Nope. Not a one. Three stars, one planet.”

“You’re certain? After all, this system, lying outside the Commonwealth, has probably not been surveyed.”

“I’m certain. There’s just the three stars and Jexjeka.”

Magnus Ridolph considered a moment. Then, “Jexjeka revolves around Rouge and the dark star Noir revolves around Blanche. Am I right?”

“Right as a trivet. And Rouge and Blanche revolve around each other. Regular merry-go-round.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” laughed Smitz.

“Have you checked the periods of these revolutions?”

“No. What difference does it make? It’s about as foolish as your idea about ghosts.”

Magnus Ridolph frowned. “Allow me to be the judge of that. After all you have paid a hundred and thirty-two thousand munits for my services.”

Thifer laughed. “I’ve got that all figured out. Don’t worry a minute. You’ll earn it. If not by detecting you’ll do it digging. We pay our men fifteen munits a day, board and room.”

Magnus Ridolph’s voice was mild. “Do I understand you correctly? That if I am unable to explain the disappearances I refund you your fee through manual labor?”

Thifer’s laugh boomed out again and Smitz’ drier chuckle joined his merriment.

“You got three choices,” said Thifer. “Detect, disappear or dig. D’you think I’m such a patsy as to let you pull what you pulled on me at Azul and get away with it?”

“Ah,” said Magnus Ridolph, “you think I dealt with you unfairly. And you brought me to Jexjeka to put me to work in your mines.”

“You got it right, mister. I’m a hard man to deal with when I’m crowded.”

Magnus Ridolph returned to the cucumbers. “Your unpleasant threats are supererogatory.”

“Are
what?
”

“Unnecessary. I intend to solve the mystery of the disappearances.”

Thifer’s big mouth twisted in the aftermath of his laugh. “I’d say you were sensible.”

“One more question,” said Magnus Ridolph. “The interval between the disappearances is what?”

“Eighty-four days. A little over a year—a Jexjeka year, that is. The year is eighty-two days of twenty-six Earth hours each.”

“According to this interval, when would the next critical night be due?”

“In—let’s see—four days.”

“Thank you,” said Ridolph and addressed himself to his cucumbers.

“Got any ideas?” Thifer asked.

“A large number. It is the basis of my method. I examine every conceivable hypothesis. I make an outline, expanding the sub-headings as fully as possible. If I am sufficiently thorough, among these hypotheses will be actuality.

“So far my theories range from crevasses gaping to engulf the men through ghosts to your murdering these men yourself for some purpose of your own. Possibly insurance.”

Smitz’ chin dropped, dangled, wobbled. He darted a startled glance at Thifer, drew slightly away.

Thifer’s face was a blank blotch of tough leathery flesh. “Anything’s possible,” he said.

Magnus Ridolph made a pedantic gesture with his fork. “Many things are not possible. Your concept of ghosts—pseudo-religious bogies—is impossible. Mine is not. I’ll grant that if your kind of ghosts were possible they would enjoy haunting Jexjeka. It is the bleakest, most chilling world I have ever seen.”

“You’ll get used to it,” said Thifer grimly. “A hundred and thirty-two thousand munits, at fifteen munits a day, is—eighty-seven hundred days. You’re lucky I throw in board, room, work-clothes.”

Magnus Ridolph rose. “I find your humor difficult to enjoy. Excuse me, please.” He bowed and left them. As the door slid back into place he heard Thifer’s booming laugh and Smitz’ ready cackle. And Magnus Ridolph smiled quietly.

Four days to the critical night. Magnus Ridolph commandeered the hopper, flew high, flew low across the planet. He landed at the poles—to the north a slanted field of basalt steps, hexagonally fractured. To the south an undulating scoriaceous plain. Footprints here would leave marks for all eternity. But the prairie lay smooth as lamb’s-fleece for miles.

He explored valleys and clefts, landed the hopper on razor-keen mountain crests, looking down into the black, black-pink and gray-pink tumble. Nowhere did he find a trace of the vanished men.

He studied stations C and D with eyes that saw each square inch as a discreet area, alone and individual. And beyond the disappearance of the glass leaves, he found no circumstance which could be considered suggestive.

The fourth day arrived. At breakfast Thifer engaged Magnus Ridolph in jovial conversation, plied him with questions about his ill-fated zoo, remarked several times at the surprising expense of feeding the exotic animals. Magnus Ridolph replied curtly. The mystery had eaten at his sheath of equanimity. And in spite of a distaste for using himself as bait he could conceive no other method by which the puzzle might be resolved.

He loaded the hopper with such equipment as he considered might be useful—plastron rope, a grenade-rifle, a case of condensed provisions, tanks of water, brandy, an infra-red viewer, binoculars, a high-pressure atomizer which he loaded with fluorescent dye, thinking that if invisible creatures manifested themselves, he could discern that nature by spraying them with dye. Also included was a portable TV transmitter by means of which he planned to keep in touch with Thifer.

Thifer watched the preparations with detached amusement. At last Magnus Ridolph was ready to depart. As if by sudden thought he looked ingenuously toward Thifer. “Perhaps you’d like to accompany me? You must be curious.”

Thifer snorted his mastodonic snort. “Not
that
curious! I was curious to the extent of a hundred thirty-two thousand munits, that’s enough.”

Magnus Ridolph nodded regretfully. “Well, goodby.”

“Goodby,” said Thifer. “Turn on the transmitter as soon as you arrive. I want to see what happens.”

The hopper rose on its four cross-arms. The propulsive jets took hold, the little platform slid off across the waste.

Thifer watched the hopper become a pink mote, then returned inside the dome. He removed his air-suit, brewed a gallon of tea, sat beside the telescreen.

Two hours later the call-light glowed. Thifer pushed the switch. A view of C appeared on the screen and he heard Magnus Ridolph’s voice.

“Everything is about as usual. No sign of anything strange. I’m hovering at twenty feet. Trip lines are threaded entirely around the oasis. A snake could not approach without signaling its presence. The sun is setting, as you see.

“I think I’ll turn on the flood-lights.” Thifer saw a sudden increase of illumination. “At intervals I plan to spray the area with the fluorescent dye. If anything more solid than the vacuum is present it should show up.”

Magnus Ridolph’s voice faded off. And Thifer, watching intently, saw the view on his screen change as Magnus Ridolph slid the hopper here and there around the oasis.

Darkness came, dead black sightlessness beyond the reach of the floodlights. On Thifer’s screen the oasis showed in harsh black and white contrast, the glass leaves on the trees glinting and twinkling like spray. Several hours passed, during which, at intervals, Magnus Ridolph made terse reports.

“Nothing unusual. No disturbance of any sort.”

Then Thifer heard him say, in a tone of puzzlement, “There’s a peculiar feeling—indescribable. A presence of—”

The words broke off, the view in the screen gave a tremendous blurring swing.

Thifer was gazing into blackness. He slowly arose. “Mmph,” he muttered. “Looks like the old goat earned his money the hard way.”

The following day when he made a cautious survey of C, there was no sign of Magnus Ridolph, his hopper or any of his equipment. Magnus Ridolph had disappeared as completely as if Destiny had reached back in time and erased the fact of his birth.

Thifer shrugged. It was a mystery. Evidently it would remain a mystery as he intended to spend no more money and endanger no more men towards its solution. Farm C and D eighty days out of the year, abandon them during the dangerous nights. The only sensible thing to do.

Two days passed. On the night of the second day Thifer sat with Smitz the mine foreman and Edson the chief engineer at the long dining table. Dinner had been cleared away. The three were discussing a small refining plant at the mouth of the centaurium mine. A model stood on the table before them, mugs of beer were at hand.

The door opened, Magnus Ridolph entered quietly, nodded. “Good evening, gentlemen. Busy, I see. Go right ahead. Don’t let me interrupt.”

“
Ridolph!
” bellowed Thifer. “Where have you been?”

Magnus Ridolph raised his eyebrows. “Why, pursuing my mission, of course.”

“But—you disappeared!”

Magnus Ridolph stroked his beard complacently. “In a sense, yes. But only temporarily as you see.”

Thifer frowned and his red-brown eyes bored at Magnus Ridolph. Suddenly they glowed, became dangerously hot. “Do you mean to tell me you sneaked off the station?”

Magnus Ridolph made a brusque angry gesture. “Silence, man, silence! How in thunder can I talk while you bleat like a sheep?”

Thifer’s face took on the maroon tinge of near-hysteria. In the lowest of voices he said, “Go ahead. It had better be good.”

Said Magnus Ridolph, “I disappeared—just as all your other men disappeared. I was taken by the same agency that took them.”

“And what is this agency?”

Magnus Ridolph settled into a chair. “It is a large black object. It exerts a tremendous urgency. It will brook no contrary will.”

“Get to the point, Ridolph!”

“It is the dark star Noir—the world which you erroneously believe revolves around the white sun.”

“But it does!” cried Thifer blankly. “You can see it in opposition and it eclipses—” his voice became a murmur “—every eighty-four days.”

“The dark star follows a very peculiar orbit,” said Magnus Ridolph. “An orbit in the shape of a figure-eight—around Blanche, across, around Rouge. The orbit brings it only a few thousand miles outside the orbit of Jexjeka. Close enough for its gravity to sweep the face of Jexjeka clean.”

“Nonsense,” snapped Thifer. “Impossible. If it came close enough to counter the gravitational field of Jexjeka it would pull the whole planet after it.”

Magnus Ridolph shook his head. “Jexjeka is nine thousand miles in diameter. At the surface Noir’s gravity is stronger than that of Rouge combined with the gravity of Jexjeka. At the center of the planet, forty-five hundred miles away, Rouge’s gravity is dominant and Jexjeka continues in its orbit, though there are perturbations.

“Jexjeka’s year is eighty-two days. Noir’s cycle is eighty-four days, so that every year it passes Jexjeka at a different spot in the orbit. In ten or fifteen more years, Jexjeka should be far enough around so that when Noir swings around in back of Rouge, the effect should no longer be dangerous.”

Thifer frowned, drummed on the table. He looked up at Magnus Ridolph. “What happened to you?”

“Well, first I felt a peculiar visceral sensation of lightness, which increased with amazing speed. Noir approached, passed very swiftly. Then I felt as if I were falling head downward. So I was—falling away from Jexjeka to Noir. The support-jets of the hopper, which had been turned against Jexjeka, were adding to the acceleration.

“I suppose a half-minute passed before I grasped what was occurring. And then I was out in space, falling against a great black sphere.”

“Why can’t we see it,” said Thifer sharply. “Why is it not visible, like a moon?”

Magnus Ridolph considered. “Noir probably is composed of cold star-stuff—dovetailed protons, incredibly heavy, surrounded by an envelope of compacted gas which absorbs most of the incident light.”

“Well,” grumbled Thifer, “that may or may not be. Go on with your story.”

“There’s not much more to it. I righted the hopper, turned on all the power at hand. It was just barely enough to edge me back toward Jexjeka. It took two days to return.”

“I suppose all the other men are dead?”

“I don’t see how they could possibly have survived.”

For a few moments there was silence in the room. Then Thifer pounded on the table with a fist like a small tub. “Well, if so, that’s that. We know what it is and we can be careful.”

“Such being the case,” said Magnus Ridolph, “I have fulfilled my obligation to you. I have given you your money’s worth. Now I would appreciate your returning me either to Azul or to one of the Gamma Scorpionis planets, whichever is more convenient to you.”

Thifer growled. “There’s an ore ship leaving pretty soon. You can stow aboard that.”

Magnus Ridolph’s eyebrows leveled. “How soon is pretty soon?”

“Depends on how fast we load her, how the ore runs. A month or two, maybe a little longer if we don’t bring in a new vein.”

“And where does this ore-ship unload?”

“At our plant on Hephaestos.”

Magnus Ridolph said mildly, “That would be as inconvenient for me as Jexjeka.”

“Sorry,” said Thifer. “Right now I can’t take time off to send you back. I’ve got other things to think of. That dark star—”