L. Ron Hubbard - Ole Doc Methuselah

Ole Doc Methuselah

by L.Ron Hubbard

Version 1.0

A #BW Release

Ole Doc Methuselah

Ole Doc Methuselah wasn't thinking what he was doing or

he never would have landed on Spico that tempestuous

afternoon. He had been working out some new formulas

for cellular radiation—in his head as usual, he never could

find his log tables—and the act of also navigating his

rocket ship must have been too much for him. He saw the

asteroid planet, de-translated his speed and landed.

He sat there for some time at the controls, gazing out

into the pleasant meadow and at the brook which wan-

dered so invitingly upon it, and finishing up his tabulations.

When he had written down the answer on his gauntlet

cuff—his filing system was full of torn scraps of cuff—he

felt very pleased with himself. He had mostly forgotten

where he had been going, but he was going to pour the

pile to her when his eye focused upon the brook. Ole Doc

took his finger off the booster switch and grinned.

"That sure is green grass," he said with a pleased sigh.

And then he looked up over the control panels where he

hung his fishing rod.

Who knows what would have happened to Junction City

if Ole Doc hadn't decided to go fishing that day.

Seated on the lower step of the port ladder, Hippoc-

rates patiently watched his god toss flies into the water

with a deft and expert hand. Hippocrates was a sort of

cross between several things. Ole Doc had picked him up

cheap at an auction on Zeno just after the Trans-system

War. At the time he had meant to discover some things

about his purchase such as metabolism and why he dieted

solely on gypsum, but that had been thirty years ago and

Hippocrates had been an easy habit to acquire. Unpig-

mented, four-handed and silent as space itself, Hippocrates

had set himself the scattered task of remembering all the

things Ole Doc always forgot. He sat now, remembering—

particularly that Ole Doc had some of his own medicine

to take at thirty-six o'clock—and he might have sat there

that way for hours and hours, phonograph-record-wise, if a

radiating pellet hadn't come with a sharp zip past his left

antenna to land with a clang on the Morgue's thick hull.

UP! CLANG!

Page forty-nine of "Tales of the Early Space Pioneers"

went smoothly into operation in Hippocrates' gifted uni-

maginative skull, which page translated itself into un-

ruffled action.

He went inside and threw on "Force Field Beta" minus

the Nine Hundred and Sixtieth Degree Arc, that being

where Ole Doc was. Seeing that his worshipped master

went on fishing, either unwitting or uncaring, Hippocrates

then served out blasters and twenty rounds to himself and

went back to sit on the bottom step of the port ladder.

The big spaceship—dented a bit but lovely—simmered

quietly in Procyon's inviting light and the brook rippled

and Ole Doc kept casting for whatever outrageous kind of

fish he might find in that stream. This went on for an hour

and then two things happened. Ole Doc, unaware of the

Force Field, cast into it and got his fly back into his hat

and a young woman came stumbling, panic-stricken,

across the meadow toward the Morgue.

From amongst the stalks of flowers some forty feet high

emerged an Earthman, thick and dark, wearing the re-

mains of a uniform to which had been added civil space

garb. He rushed forward a dozen metres before he paused

in stride at the apparition of the huge golden ship with its

emblazoned crossed ray rods of pharmacy. Then he saw

Ole Doc fishing and the pursuer thrust a helmet up from a

contemptuous grin.

It was nearer to Ole Doc than to the ship and the girl,

exhausted and disarrayed, stumbled toward him. The Earth-

man swept wide and put Ole Doc exactly between him-

self and the ladder before he came in.

Hippocrates turned from page forty-nine to page one

hundred and fifteen. He leaped nimbly up to the top of the

ship in the hope of shooting the Earthman on an angle

which would miss Ole Doc. But he had no more than

arrived and sighted before it became apparent to him that

he would also now shoot the girl. This puzzled him.

Obviously the girl was not an enemy who would harm Ole

Doc. But the Earthman was. Still it was better to blast

girl and Earthman than to see Ole Doc harmed in any

cause. The effort at recalling an exact instance made

Hippocrates tremble and in that tremble Ole Doc also

came into his fire field.

Having no warnings whatever, Ole Doc had just looked

up from disentangling his hook from first his shirt and

then his thumb and beheld two humans cannonading down

upon him.

The adrenalized condition of the woman was due to the

Earthman, that was clear. The Earthman was obviously a

blast-for-hire from some tough astral slum and he had

recently had a fight for two knuckles bled. The girl threw

herself in a collapse at Ole Doc's feet and the Earthman

came within a fatal fifteen feet.

Ole Doc twitched his wrist and put his big-hooked fly

into the upper lip of the Earthman. This disappointed Ole

Doc a little for he had been trying for the nose. The

beggar was less hypo-thyroid than he had first estimated.

Pulling his game-fish bellowing into the stream, Ole Doc

disarmed him and let him have a ray barrel just back of

the medulla oblongata—which took care of the fellow

nicely.

Hippocrates lowered himself with disappointed grunts

down to the ladder. At his master's hand signal he came

forth with two needles, filled, sterilized and awaiting only

a touch to break their seals and become useful.

Into the gluteal muscle—through clothes and all be-

cause of sterilizing radiation of the point—Doc gave the

Earthman the contents of needle one. At the jab the

fellow had squirmed a little and the doctor lifted one eyelid.

"You are a stone!" said Ole Doc. "You can't move."

The Earthman lay motionless, wide-eyed, being a stone.

Hippocrates carefully noted the time with the fact in

order to remind his master to let the fellow stop being a

stone some time. But in noting the time, Hippocrates

found that it was six minutes to thirty-six o'clock and

therefore time for a much more important thing—Ole

Doc's own medicine.

Brusquely, Hippocrates grabbed up the unconscious girl

and waded back across the stream with her. The girl could

wait. Thirty-six o'clock was thirty-six o'clock.

"Hold up!" said Ole Doc, needle poised.

Hippocrates grunted and kept on walking. He went

directly into the main operating room of the Morgue and

there amidst the cleverly jammed hodge-podge of trays

and ray tubes, drawers, masks, retorts and reflectors, he

unceremoniously dropped the girl. Mono-minded now, for

this concerned his master—and where the rest of the

world could go if it interfered with his master was a thing

best expressed in silence—Hippocrates laid out the serum

and the proper rays.

Humbly enough the master bared his arm and then

exposed himself—as a man does before a fireplace on a

cold day—to the pouring out of life from the fixed tubes.

It took only five minutes. It had to be done every five

days.

Satisfied now, Hippocrates boosted the girl into a prop-

er position for medication on the centre table and adjusted

a lamp or two fussily, meanwhile admiring his master's

touch with the needle.

Ole Doc was smiling, smiling with a strange poignancy.

She was a very pretty girl, neatly made, small waisted, high

breasted. Her tumbling crown of hair was like an avalanche

of fire in the operating lights. Her lips were very soft,

likely to be yielding to—

"Father!" she screamed in sudden consciousness. "Fa-

ther!"

Ole Doc looked perplexed, offended. But then he saw

that she did not know where she was. Her wild glare

speared both master and thing.

"Where is my father?"

"We don't rightly know, ma'am," said Ole Doc. "You

just-—"

"He's out there. They shot our ship down. He's dying or

dead! Help him!"

Hippocrates looked at master and master nodded. And

when the servant left the ship it was with a bound so swift

that it rocked the Morgue a little. He was only a metre

tall, was Hippocrates, but he weighed nearly five hundred

kilos.

Behind him came Ole Doc, but their speeds were so

much at variance that before the physician could reach

the tall flowers, Hippocrates was back through them car-

rying a man stretched out on a compartment door

wrenched from its strong hinges for the purpose. That was

page eight of "First Aid in Space", not to wrestle people

around but to put them on flat things. Man and door

weighed nearly as much as Hippocrates but he wanted no

help.

" 'Lung burns,' said Hippocrates, 'are very difficult to

heal and most usually result in death. When the heart is

also damaged, particular care should be taken to move the

patient as little as possible since exertion—' "

Ole Doc listened to, without heeding, the high, squeaky

singsong. Walking beside the girl's father, Ole Doc was

not so sure.

He felt a twinge of pity for the old man. He was proud

of face, her father, grey of hair and very high and noble

of brow. He was a big man, the kind of a man who would

think big thoughts and fight and die for ideals.

The doctor beheld the seared stains, the charred fabric,

the blasted flesh which now composed the all of the man's

chest. The bloody and gruesome scene was not a thing for

a young girl's eyes, even under disinterested circum-

stances—and a hypo would only do so much.

He stepped to the port and waved a hand back to the

main salon. There was a professional imperiousness about

it which thrust her along with invisible force. Out of her

sight now, Ole Doc allowed Hippocrates to place the body

on the multi-trayed operating table.

Under the gruesome flicker of ultra-violet, the wounded

man looked even nearer death. The meters on the wall

counted respiration and pulse and haemoglobin and all

needles hovered in red while the big dial, with exaggerated

and inexorable calm, swept solemnly down toward black.

"He'll be dead in ten minutes," said Ole Doc. He looked

at the face, the high forehead, the brave contours. "He'll

be dead and Adam's breed is gone enough to seed."

At the panel, the doctor threw six switches and a great

arc began to glow and snap like a hungry beast amid the

batteries of tubes. A dynamo whined to a muted scream

and then another began to growl. Ozone and brimstone bit

the nostrils. The table was pooled in smoky light.

The injured man's clothing vanished and with small

tinks bits of metal dropped against the floor—coins, buck-

les, shoe nails.

Doc tripped another line of switches and a third motor

commenced to yell. The light about the table graduated

from blue up to unseen black. The great hole in the charred

chest began to glow whitely. The beating heart which had

been laid bare by the original weapon slowed, slowed,

slowed.

With a final twitch of his wrist, Doc cut out the first

stages and made his gesture to Hippocrates. That one

lifted off the top tray which bore the man and, holding it

balanced with one hand, opened a gravelike vault. There

were long, green tubes glowing in the vault and the feel of

swirling gases. Hippocrates slid the tray along the grooves

and clanged the door upon it.

Doc stood at the board for a little while, leaning a little

against the force field which protected him from stray or

glancing rays, and then sighing a weary sigh, evened the

glittering line. Normal light and air came back into the

operating room and the salon door slid automatically

open.

The girl stood there, tense question in her every line,

fear digging nails into palms.

Doc put on a professional smile. "There is a very fair

chance that we may save him, Miss—"

"Elston."

"A very fair chance. Fifty-fifty."

"But what are you doing now?" she demanded.

Doc would ordinarily have given a rough time to any-

one else who had dared to ask him that. But he felt

somehow summery as he gazed at her.

"All I can, Miss Elston."

"Then he'll soon be well?"

"Why ... ah ... that depends. You see, well—" how

was he going to tell her that what he virtually needed was

a whole new man? And how could he explain that profes-

sional ethics required one to forego the expedience of

kidnapping and murder, no matter how vital it might

seem? For what does one do with a heart split in two and

a lung torn open wide when they are filled with foreign

matter and ever-burning rays unless it is to get a new

chest entire?

"We'll have to try," he said. "He'll be all right for now

... for a month, or more perhaps. He is in no pain, will

have no memory of this and if he is ever cured, will be

cured entirely. The devil of it is, Miss Elston, men always

advance their weapons about a thousand years ahead of

medical science. But then, we'll try. We'll try."

And the way she looked at him then made it really

summer. "Even ..." she said hesitantly, "even if you are

so young, I have all the confidence in the universe in you,

doctor."

That startled Ole Doc. He hadn't been patronized that

way for a long, long time. But more important—he

glanced into the mirror, over the table. He looked more

closely. Well, he did look young. Thirty, maybe. And a

glow began to creep up over him, and as he looked back

to her and saw her cascading glory of hair and the

sweetness of her face—

"Master doctor!" interrupted the unwelcome Hippoc-

rates. "The Earthman is gone."

Ole Doc stared out the port and saw thin twirls of

smoke arising from the charred and blasted grass. The

Earthman was gone all right, and very much gone for

good. But one boot remained.

"Looks," said Ole Doc, "like we've got some opposition."

"We were proceeding to Junction City," said the girl,

"when a group of men shot down our ship and attacked

us."

Doc picked a thoughtful tooth for the fish he had

caught had been excellent—deep-fried, Southern style. He

felt benign, chivalrous. Summer was in full bloom. He was

thinking harder about her hair than about narrative. Rob-

bery and banditry on the spaceways were not new, partic-

ularly on such a little inhabited planet as Spico, but the

thoughts which visited him had not been found in his mind

for a long, long tune. She made a throne room of the tiny

dining salon and Doc harked back to lonely days in cold

space, on hostile and uninviting planets, and the woman-

hunger which comes.

"Did you see any of them?" he asked only to hear her

voice again.

"I didn't need to," she said.

The tone she took startled Ole Doc. Had he been

regarding this from the viewpoint of Volume 16 of Klote's

Standard work on human psychology he would have real-

ized the predicament into which with those words he had

launched himself. Thirteen hundred years ago a chap

named Mallory had written a book about knight errantry, it

had unhappily faded from Ole Doc's mind.

"Miss Elston," he said, "if you know the identity of the

band then perhaps something can be done, although I do

not see what you could possibly gain merely by bringing

them to the Bar of the Space Council."

Hippocrates was lumbering back and forth at the buffet

clearing away the remains of the meal. He was quoting

singsong under his breath the code of the Soldiers of

Light, " 'It shall be unlawful for any medical official to

engage in political activities of any kind, to involve himself

with law, or in short aid or abet the causes, petty feuds,

personal vengeances . ..' " Ole Doc did not hear him. The

music of Venus was in Miss Elston's voice.

"Why I told you about the box, doctor; it contains the

deed to this planet and more important than that it was

the letter which my father was bringing here to restrain

his partner from selling off parcels of land at Junction

City. Oh doctor, can't you understand how cruel it is to

these people. More than ten thousand of them have come

here with all the savings they have in the universe to buy

land in the hope that they can profit by its re-sale to the

Procyon-Sirius Spaceways.

"When my father, Judge Elston, first became interested

in this scheme it was because it had been brought to his

attention by a Captain Blanchard who came to us at our

home near New York and told us that he had private

information that Spico was completely necessary to the

Procyon-Sirius Spaceways as a stop-over point and that it

would be of immense value. Nobody knew, except some

officials in the company, according to Captain Blanchard,

and my father was led to believe that Captain Blanchard

had an excellent reputation and that the information was

entirely correct.

"Blanchard came to Spico some time ago and laid out

the necessary landing fields and subdivided Junction City

using my father's name and money. He circulated illustrat-

ed folders everywhere setting forth the opportunities of

business and making the statement that the Spaceways

would shortly begin their own installation. Thousands and

thousands of people came here in the hope either of

settling and beginning a new life or of profiting in the

boom which would result. Blanchard sold them land still

using my father's name.

"A short while ago my father learned from officials of

the company that a landing field was not necessary here

due to a new type of propulsion motor which made a

stop-over unnecessary. He learned also that Captain Blan-

chard had been involved in blue skys speculations on

Alpha Centauri. He visio-graphed Blanchard and told him

to cease all operations immediately and to refund all mon-

ey, saying that he, Judge Elston, would absorb any loss

occasioned in the matter. Blanchard told him that it was a

good scheme and was making money and that he didn't

intend to refund a dime of it. He also said that if my

father didn't want himself exposed as a crook he would

have to stay out of it. Blanchard reminded him that only

the name of Elston appeared on all literature and deeds

and that the entire scheme had obviously been conceived

by my father. Then he threatened to kill my father and we

have been unable to get in contact with him since.

"I begged my father to expose Blanchard to the Upper

Council but he said he would have to wash his own dirty

linen. Immediately afterwards we came up here. He tried

to leave me behind but I was terrified that something

would happen to him and so I would not stay home.

"My father had the proof that the Procyon-Sirius

Spaceways would not build their field here. It was in that

box. Blanchard has kept good his threat. He attacked us,

he stole the evidence, and now—" she began to sob

suddenly at the thought of her father lying there in that

harshly glittering room so close to death. Hippocrates

phonograph-record-wise was beginning the code all over

again.

" 'It shall be unlawful for any medical officer to engage

in political activities of any kind, to involve himself with

law, or in short aid or abet the causes, petty feuds,

personal vengeances . . .' "

But Ole Doc's eyes were on her hair and his mind was

roaming back to other days. Almost absently he dropped a

minute capsule in her water glass and told her to drink it.

Soon she was more composed.

"Even if you could save my father's life, doctor," she

said, "it wouldn't do any good. The shock of this scandal

would kill him."

Ole Doc hummed absently and put his hands behind his

head. His black silk dressing gown rustled. His youthful

eyes drifted inwards. He thrust his furred boots out before

him. The humming stopped. He sat up. His fine surgeon's

hands doubled into fists and with twin blows upon the

table he propelled himself to his feet.

"Why, there is nothing more simple than this. All we

have to do is find this Blanchard, take the evidence away

from him, tell the people that they've been swindled, give

them back their money, put your father on his feet and

everything will be all right. The entire mess will be

straightened out in jig time." He beamed fondly upon her.

And then, with an air of aplomb began to pour fresh

wine. He had half-filled the second glass when abrupt

realization startled him so that he spilled a great gout of

wine where it lay like a puddle of blood on the snowy

cloth.

But across from him sat his ladye faire and now that he

had couched his lance and found himself face to face with

an enemy, even the thought of the shattered and black-

ened remains of the Earthman did not drive him back. He

smiled reassuringly and patted her hand.

Her eyes were jewels in the amber light.

Junction City was all turmoil, dust and hope. There

were men there who had made a thousand dollars yester-

day, who had made two thousand dollars this morning,

and who avidly dreamed of making five thousand before

night. Lots were being bought and sold with such giddy

rapidity that no one could keep trace of their value.

Several battered tramp spaceships which had brought pio-

neers and their effects lay about the spaceport. Rumors,

all of them confident, all of them concerning profit

banged about the streets like bullets.

Smug, hard and ruthless, Edouard Blanchard sat under

the awning of the Comet Saloon. His agate eyes were

fixed upon a newly arrived ship, a gold-colored ship with

crossed ray rods upon her nose. He looked up and down

the crowded dusty street where space boot trod on leather

brogan and place-silk rustled on denim. Men and women

from a hundred planets were there. Men of hundreds of

races and creeds were there with pasts as checkerboard as

history itself, yet bound together by a common anxiety to

profit and build a world anew.

It mattered nothing to Edouard Blanchard that bubbles

left human wreckage in their wake, that on his departure

all available buying power for this planet would go as

well. Ten thousand persons, whose only crime had been

hope, would be consigned to grubbing without finance,

tools, or imported food for a questionable living on a

small orb bound on a forgotten track in space. Such

concerns rarely trouble the consciences of the Edouard

Blanchards.

The agate eyes fastened upon an ambling Martian named

Dart, who with his mask to take out forty per cent of the

oxygen from this atmosphere and so permit him to

breathe, looked like some badly conceived and infinitely

evil gnome.

"Dart," said Blanchard, "take a run over to that medi-

cal ship and find out what a Soldier of Light is doing in a

place like this."

The Martian fumbled with his mask and then uneasily

hefted his blaster belt. He squirmed and wriggled as

though some communication of great importance had met

a dam halfway up to the surface. Blanchard stared at him.

"Well? Go! What are you waiting for?"

Dart squirmed until a small red haze of dust stood

about his boots. "I've always been faithful to you, captain.

I ain't never sold you out to nobody. I'm honest, that's

what I am." His dishonest eyes wriggled upwards until

they reached the level of Blanchard's collar.

Blanchard came upright. There was a sadistic stir in his

hands. Under this compulsion Dart wilted and his voice

from a vicious whine changed to a monotonous wail:

"That was the ship Miss Elston ran to. I'm an honest man

and I ain't going to tell you no different."

"But you said she escaped and I've had twelve men

searching for her. Dart, why couldn't you have told me

this?"

"I just thought she'd fly away and that would be all

there was to it. I didn't think she'd come back. But you

ain't got nothing to be feared of, Captain Blanchard. No

Soldier of Light can monkey with politics. The Universal

Medical Council won't interfere."

Captain Blanchard's hands, long, thin, twisted anew as

though they were wrapping themselves around the sinews

in Dart's body and snapping them out one by one. He

restrained the motion and sank back. "You know I'm your

friend, Dart. You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt

you. You know it's only those who oppose my will whom

I ... shall I say, remove. You know that you are safe

enough."

"Oh yes, Captain Blanchard, I know you are my friend.

I appreciate it. You don't know how I appreciate it. I'm

an honest man and I don't mind saying so."

"And you'll always be honest, won't you, Dart?" said

Blanchard, white hands twitching. He smiled. From a deep

pocket he extracted first a long knife with which he

regularly pared his nails, then a thick sheaf of money, and

finally amongst several deeds, a communication which Mr.

Elston had been attempting to bring to Spico. He read it

through in all its damning certainty. It said that the

Procyon-Sirius Spaceways would not use this planet. Then,

striking a match to light a cigar he touched it to the

document and idly watched it burn. The last flaming

fragment was suddenly hurled at the Martian.

"Get over there instantly," said Blanchard, "and find

out what you can. If Miss Elston comes away from that

ship unattended, see that she never goes back to it. And

make very certain, my honest friend, that the Soldier on

that ship doesn't find out anything."

But before Dart had more than beaten out the fire on

the skirt of his coat a youthful pleasant voice addressed

them. Blanchard hastily smoothed out his hands, veiled his

L. Ron Hubbard - Ole Doc Methuselah

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