The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (48 page)

“Three-legged Joe?” inquired Milke sarcastically. “More likely there’s a leak.”

Paskell kicked at the material, now stiff as sheet metal with the cold. “We’ll have a devil of a time finding it.”

“Oh not so bad. We’ll pump in warm air—”

“And then?”

“Well, there’s a leak. As soon as the air hits the vacuum the water vapor condenses. So we look for a little jet of steam.”

Paskell said in a precise voice, “There’s no leak.”

“No? Then why—”

“We never turned on the heat. The air inside liquefied.”

Milke turned away to look out over the lake. Paskell quietly plugged in the cord; power circulated through elements meshed into the tent fabric.

Milke turned back, slapping his gloves together. “That’s about all we can do until the air thaws out…” He looked at Paskell, who again was standing as if listening. Irritably he asked, “What’s the matter now?”

Paskell made a furtive motion toward the ground. Milke looked intently down.

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

“Three-legged Joe,” whispered Paskell.

Milke looked hurriedly in all directions. “There can’t be anything out there.” He turned. Paskell had disappeared.

“Oliver! Where are you?”

“I’m in the ship,” came a calm voice.

Milke backed slowly toward the port. Night had come to Odfars; starlight shone on the quicksilver lake, intensified by the booster goggles to near the power of moonlight. Was that a black shadow standing in the defile? Milke hurriedly backed against the port.

It was locked. He pounded against the metal. “Hey, Oliver, open up!”

He looked over his shoulder. The black shape seemed to have moved forward.

Paskell came to the port, looked carefully out past Milke, threw back the bolts. Milke burst into the air-chamber, on into the ship. He took off his helmet. “What’s the idea locking me out? Suppose that damn whatever it is was hot on my tail?”

Paskell said in a practical voice, “Well, we’d hardly want him inside the ship, would we?”

Milke roared, “If he got me first I wouldn’t care whether he got into the ship or not.” He jumped up into the central dome, played the searchlight around the lake. Paskell watched from the sideport. “See anything?”

“No,” grumbled Milke. “I still don’t believe there’s anything out there. Let’s eat dinner and get some sleep.”

“Perhaps we should keep watch.”

“What do we watch for? What good would it do if we saw something?”

Paskell shrugged. “We might be able to deal with it, if we knew what it was.”

Milke said, “If there
is
anything out there—” he slapped the holster at his belt “—I’ll know how to deal with it…A couple ammo into its hide and we’ll have to screen for its pieces.”

The ship vibrated; from the tail came a harsh sound. The floor jarred under their feet. Milke looked askance at Paskell, who puffed rather desperately at his pipe. Milke ran back to the searchlight. But the central dome interrupted the backward path of the beam and the tail was left in darkness.

“I can’t see a thing,” fretted Milke. He jumped down to the deck, looked indecisively at the after port.

The vibrations ceased. Milke squared his shoulders, pulled the helmet back over his head. Slowly Paskell followed suit.

“You bring a flashlight,” said Milke. “I’ll have my gun ready…”

They stepped into the air lock. Paskell gingerly thrust his arm out, aimed the light toward the tent. “Nothing there,” grumbled Milke. He pushed past Paskell, stepped down to the ground. Paskell followed, played the light in a circle.

“Whatever it was, it’s gone,” grunted Milke. “It heard us coming—”

“Look,” whispered Paskell.

It was no more than a zigzag of shadows, a moving mass.

Milke held out his arm; his gun spat pale blue sparks. Explosion—a great splash of orange light. “Got him!” cried Milke exultantly. “Dead center!”

Their eyes adjusted to the pallid illumination of the flashlight. Nothing but the glistening sheen of the quicksilver and—a rumpled tumbled mess where the assay tent had stood.

Milke said in an outrage too deep for vehemence, “He’s ruined our gear—our tent!”

“Look out!” screamed Paskell. The flashlight took lunatic sweeps over the lake. Milke sent shot after shot at a tall shape; the explosions smote back on their suits; the orange glare blinded their eyes.

Thud-bump…Thud-bump…
“Inside!” gasped Milke. “Inside, we can’t hold him off…”

The outer port slammed. A breathless moment later the hull was jarred, scraped along the quicksilver. Milke and Paskell stood haunted and pale in the center of the deck.

Metal creaked at the stern under pressure or torsion. Milke’s voice came high-pitched. “We’re not built to take that kind of stuff—”

The ship lurched to the side. Paskell put his pipe in his pocket, grabbed a stanchion. Milke jumped up to the controls. “We’d better get out of here.”

Paskell cleared his throat. “Wait, I think it’s stopped.”

The boat was quiet. Milke thought of the searchlight, flicked the switch. “Hah!”

“What is it?”

Milke stared out the port. He said slowly, “I really don’t know. Something like a one-legged man on crutches…That’s how he walks.”

“Is he big?”

“Yes,” said Milke. “Rather big…I think he’s gone, through that fissure—” He came down to the deck, split open his space suit, climbed nervously out. “That was Three-legged Joe.”

Paskell took a sudden seat on the bunk, reached for his pipe. “Quite an impressive fellow.”

Milke laughed shortly. “I can certainly understand how he scared the bejabbers out of those old bindlestiffs.”

“Yes,” Paskell nodded earnestly. “I can too.” He lit his pipe, puffed reflectively. “He can’t be invulnerable…”

Milke dropped leadenly upon his own bunk. “We’ll get him—somehow or other.”

Paskell craned his neck out the port. “There’ll be light in a few hours…I suppose we might as well sleep.”

“Yes,” said Milke. “If Three-legged Joe comes back, I imagine he’ll let us know about it.”

Sigma Sculptoris washed the quicksilver lake with the palest of lights. Milke and Paskell glumly examined the wreckage of the assay tent.

Milke’s indignation brimmed over the restraints he had set upon himself. He clenched his fists inside the gloves, glared toward the defile. “I’d like to lay my hands on that three-legged devil…”

Paskell busied himself among the tatters of the tent. “Nothing but ribbons.”

Milke said gloomily, “No use to think about mending it…” He watched Paskell curiously. “What are you looking for?”

“I wonder what possessed him to break into the tent.”

“Sheer destructiveness.”

Paskell said thoughtfully, “I notice one thing—” he paused.

“What?”

“All our reagents are gone.”

Milke bent over the wreckage. “All of them?”

“All the acids. All the bases. He left distilled water, the salts…”

“Hm,” said Milke. “What do you make of that?”

Paskell shrugged inside his suit. “It’s suggestive.”

“Of what, if I may ask?”

“I’m not sure.” Paskell wandered out over the quicksilver, searching the surface. “He was about here when you shot at him?”

“Just about.”

Paskell bent. “Look here.” He held up a rough brownish-gray object the size of his thumb. “Here’s a piece of Three-legged Joe.”

Milke examined the fragment. “If this is all our weapons did to him—he’s tough. This stuff is flexible!”

Paskell took back the fragment. “Let’s take it in and run it through the works.”

They returned into the ship. Paskell clamped the bit in a vise and after exasperating difficulty, succeeded in slicing free a brittle shaving. He forced it flat between a slide and a cover glass, examined it under the microscope. “Remarkable.”

“Let’s see.” Milke applied his eye. “Hm…it’s like a carpet—woven in three dimensions.”

“Right. No matter which way you cut or tear, fibers mat up against you…now let’s see what he’s made of.”

“You’re the technician,” said Milke.

Paskell looked up from the workbench an hour later. “It’s a very complex silicon compound. The spectroscope shows silicon, lithium, fluorine, oxygen, iron, sulfur, selenium, but I can’t begin to put a name to the stuff.”

“Call it Joe-hide,” Milke suggested.

Paskell blew into his pipe, looked solemnly down at the workbench. “I have a tentative theory about Joe’s inner workings…”

“Well?”

“Obviously he needs energy to exist. His hide shows no radioactivity, so he must use chemical energy. At least I can’t think of any other form of energy that he could be using.”

Milke frowned. “Chemical energy? At absolute zero?”

“He’s insulated. No telling how high his internal temperature goes.”

“What kind of chemical energy? There’s no free oxygen, no fluorine, nothing…”

“Presumably he uses whatever he can get—anything that reacts to produce energy.”

Milke pounded his fist. “We could bait him into a trap, with, say, a chunk of solid oxygen!”

“I should certainly think so. But what kind of trap?”

Milke scowled. “A dead-fall.”

“Here on Odfars gravity is not too strong…we’d have to stack ten thousand cubic yards of rock to make an impression.”

Milke paced up and down the room. “I’ve got it!”

“Well?” said Paskell mildly.

“Perhaps you could make a detonator that we could set off from the ship.”

“Yes, that could be done.”

“Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll set out about twenty pounds of myradyne, with the detonator in the center. Joe will come past, tuck this bundle into whatever kind of stomach he’s got. We wait till he gets a few hundred yards from the ship, then set it off.”

Paskell pursed his lips. “If events proceeded along those lines, everything would be fine.”

“Well, why shouldn’t they? You claim that Joe eats—”

“Not ‘claim’—‘theorize’.”

“—anything that produces energy. Well, the myradyne should look to him like ice cream and candy and cake all mixed up. It’s nothing else
but
energy.”

“It’s a different kind of energy—the energy of instability. Perhaps he only digests energy of combination.”

“You’re quibbling,” said Milke with disgust. “I say the idea’s worth trying.”

Paskell shrugged. “Get out your myradyne.”

“How long will it take you to fix up a detonator?”

“Twenty minutes. I’ll hook up a battery and a spare head-set to the cartridge…”

While Milke gingerly carried the packet of explosive across the lake, Paskell stood by the port watching. Milke surveyed the landscape with fine calculation, setting down the packet, moving it a few yards to the right, another few yards toward the defile. Finally satisfied, he looked back to Paskell for approval. Paskell signaled casually, and his hand fell against the detonation switch. He looked out toward Milke, hastily jumped into his suit, let himself through the port, ran across the lake.

Milke asked, “What’s the trouble?”

Paskell said, “That remote detonator doesn’t work. I’d better take a look at it.”

Milke stared at him truculently. “How do you know it doesn’t work?”

Paskell made a vague gesture, knelt beside the packet, unfolded the wrapping.

“You couldn’t have just sensed it,” Milke insisted.

“Well, as a matter of fact, my hand accidentally hit the switch, and it didn’t go off—so I thought I’d better run out and see what was wrong.”

Milke seemed to sink inside his suit. For a moment there was silence. “Ah,” said Paskell. “Nothing very serious; I neglected to clip down the battery leads…now it’s ready to go—”

“I’m going back to the ship,” said Milke thickly.

Paskell glanced up toward Sigma Sculptoris. “Yes, there’s only a few moments of daylight left…”

Inside the ship, without the booster goggles, night apparently had already come to the quicksilver lake.

Milke roused himself from his bunk where he had been quietly sitting, took his goggles, went up into the control blister. “Nothing in sight.”

Paskell said mildly, “Maybe Joe won’t be back.”

Milke, with his back to Paskell, said nothing.

“Maybe he’s been watching us all day,” Paskell remarked.

Milke leaned forward. “There’s something moving in the gulch…there goes the daylight. Blast it! Now I can’t see anything…and the dome’s in the way of the searchlight again.”

In sudden inspiration Paskell said, “Use the radar!”

Milke ran to the screen, flipped some switches, set the key on Green, short range. Paskell swung around the antenna. “Hold it!” said Milke. “Right there!”

Paskell and Milke bent close to the screen. The plane of the lake, the bulk of the mountains, the gap were all clear. Three-legged Joe, much closer, was a blur. “Can’t you adjust it finer?” demanded Paskell.