Eric Frank Russell - Jay Score

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2024-11-19 1 0 75.21KB 12 页 5.9玖币

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JAY SCORE by Eric Frank Russell

There are very good reasons for everything they do. To the uninitiated some of

their little tricks and some of their regulations seem mighty peculiar-but

rocketing through the cosmos isn't quite like paddling a bathtub across a farm

pond, no, sir!

For instance, this stunt of using mixed crews is pretty sensible when you look

into it. On the outward runs toward Mars, the Asteroids or beyond, they have

white Terrestrials to tend the engines because they're the ones who perfected

modern propulsion units, know most about them and can nurse them like nobody

else. All ships' surgeons are black Terrestrials because for some reason none

can explain no Negro gets gravity-bends or space nausea. Every outside repair

gang is composed of Martians who use very little air, are tiptop metal workers

and fairly immune to cosmic-ray burn.

As for the inward trips to Venus, they mix them similarly except that the

emergency pilot is always a big clunker like Jay Score. There's a motive

behind that; he's the one who provided it. I'm never likely to forget him. He

sort of sticks in the mind, for keeps. What a character!

Destiny placed me at the top of the gangway the first time he appeared. Our

ship was the Upskadaska City, a brand new freighter with limited passenger

accommodation, registered in the Venusian space-port from which she took her

name. Needless to say she was known among hardened spacemen as the Upsydaisy.

We were lying in the Colorado Rocket Basin, north of Denver, with a fair load

aboard, mostly watch-making machinery, agricultural equipment, aeronautical

jigs and tools for Upskadaska, as well as a case of radium needles for the

Venusian Cancer Research Institute. There were eight passengers; all

emigrating agriculturalists planning on making hay thirty million miles nearer

the Sun. We had ramped the vessel and were waiting for the blow-brothers- blow

siren due in forty minutes, when Jay Score arrived.

He was six feet nine, weighed at least three hundred pounds yet toted this

bulk with the easy grace of a ballet dancer. A big guy like that, moving like

that, was something worth watching. He came up the duralumin gangway with all

the nonchalance of a tripper boarding the bus for Jackson's Creek. From his

hamlike right fist dangled a rawhide case not quite big enough to contain his

bed and maybe a wardrobe or two.

Reaching the top, he paused while he took in the crossed swords on my cap,

said, "Morning, Sarge. I'm the new emergency pilot. I have to report to

Captain McNulty."

I knew we were due for another pilot now that Jeff Durkin had been promoted to

the snooty Martian scent-bottle Prometheus. So this was his successor. He was

a Terrestrial all right, but neither black nor white. His expressionless but

capable face looked as if covered with old, well- seasoned leather. His eyes

held fires resembling phosphorescence. There was an air about him that marked

him an exceptional individual the like of which I'd never met before.

"Welcome, Tiny,"I offered, getting a crick in the neck as I stared up at him.

I did not offer my hand because I wanted it for use later on."Open your

satchel and leave it in the sterilizing chamber. You'll find the skipper in

the bow:'

"Thanks," he responded without the glimmer of a smile. He stepped into the

airlock, hauling the rawhide haybarn with him. "We blast in forty minutes," I

warned.

Didn't see anything more of Jay Score until we were two hundred thousand out,

with Earth a greenish moon at the end of our vapour-trail. Then I heard him in

the passage asking someone where he could find the sergeant-at-arms. He was

directed through my door. "Sarge," he said, handing over his official

requisition, "I've come to collect the trimmings." Then he leaned on the

barrier; the whole framework creaked and the top tube sagged in the middle.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Sorry!" He unleaned. The barrier stood much better when he

kept his mass to himself.

Stamping his requisition, I went into the armoury, dug out his needle-ray

projector and a box of capsules for same. The biggest Venusian mud-skis I

could find were about eleven sizes too small and a yard too short for him, but

they'd have to do. I gave him a can of thin, multipurpose oil, a jar of

graphite, a Lepanto power-pack for his micro- wave radiophone and, finally, a

bunch of nutweed pellicules marked :"Compliments of the Bridal Planet Aromatic

Herb Corporation:"

Shoving back the spicy lumps, he said, "You can have 'em-they give me the

staggers." The rest of the stuff he forced into his side-pack without so much

as twitching an eyebrow. Long time since I'd seen anyone so poker-faced.

All the same, the way he eyed the space-suits seemed strangely wistful. There

were thirty bifurcated ones for the Terrestrials, all hanging on the wall like

sloughed skins. Also there were six head-and-shoulder helmets for the

Martians, since they needed no more than three pounds of air. There wasn't a

suit for him. I couldn't have fitted him with one if my life had depended upon

it. It'd have been like trying to can an elephant.

Well, he lumbered out lightly, if you get what I mean. The casual, loose-

limbed way he transported his tonnage made me think I'd like to be some place

else if ever he got on the rampage. Not that I thought him likely to run amok;

he was amiable enough though sphinxlike. But I was fascinated by his air of

calm assurance and by his motion which was fast, silent and eerie. Maybe the

latter was due to his habit of wearing an inch of sponge-rubber under his big

dogs.

I kept an interested eye on Jay Score while the Upsydaisy made good time on

her crawl through the void. Yes, I was more than curious about him because his

type was a new one on me despite that I've met plenty in my time. He remained

uncommunicative but kind of quietly cordial. His work was smoothly efficient

and in every way satis- factory. McNulty took a great fancy to him, though

he'd never been one to greet a newcomer with love and kisses.

Three days out, Jay made a major hit with the Martians. As everyone knows,

those goggle-eyed, ten-tentacled, half- breathing kibitzers have stuck harder

than glue to the Solar System Chess Championship for more than two centuries.

Nobody outside of Mars will ever pry them loose. They are nuts about the game

and many's the time I've seen a bunch of them go through all the colours of

the spectrum in sheer excitement when at last somebody has moved a pawn after

thirty minutes of profound cogitation.

One rest-time Jay spent his entire eight hours under three pounds pressure in

the starboard airlock. Through the lock's phones came long silences punctuated

by wild and shrill twitterings as if he and the Martians were turning the

place into a madhouse. At the end of the time we found our tentacled outside-

crew exhausted. It turned out that Jay had consented to play Kli Yang and had

forced him to a stalemate. Kli had been sixth runner-up in the last Solar

melee, had been beaten only ten times-each time by a brother Martian, of

course.

The red-planet gang had a finger on him after that, or I should say a

tentacle-tip. Every rest-time they waylaid him and dragged him into the

airlock. When we were eleven days out he played the six of them

simultaneously, lost two games, stalemated three, won one. They thought he was

a veritable whizzbang-for a mere Terrestrial. Knowing their peculiar abilities

in this respect, I thought so, too. So did McNulty. He went so far as to enter

the sporting data in the log.

You may remember the stunt that the audiopress of 2270 boosted as ` MeNulty's

Miracle Move'? It's practically a legend of the spaceways. Afterward, when

we'd got safely home, McNulty disclaimed the credit and put it where it

rightfully belonged. The audiopress had a good excuse, as usual. They said he

was the captain, wasn't he? And his name made the headline alliterative,

didn't it? Seems that there must be a sect of audio-journalists who have to be

alliterative to gain salvation.

What precipitated that crazy stunt and whitened my hair was a chunk of cosmic

flotsam. Said object took the form of a gob of meteoric nickel-iron ambling

along at the characteristic speed of pssst! Its orbit lay on the planetary

plane and it approached at right angles to our sunward course.

It gave us the business. I'd never have believed anything so small could have

made such a slam. To the present day I can hear the dreadful whistle of air as

it made a mad break for freedom through that jagged hole.

We lost quite a bit of political juice before the autodoors sealed the damaged

section. Pressure already had dropped to nine pounds when the compensators

held it and slowly began to build it up again. The fall didn't worry the

Martians; to them nine pounds was like inhaling pigwash.

There was one engineer in that sealed section. Another escaped the closing

doors by the skin of his left ear. But the first, we thought, had drawn his

fateful number and eventually would be floated out like so many spacemen

who've come to the end of their duty.

The guy who got clear was leaning against a bulwark, white-faced from the

narrowness of his squeak. Jay Score came pounding along. His jaw was working,

his eyes were like lamps, but his voice was cool and easy.

He said," Get out. Seal this room. I'll try make a snatch. Open up and let me

out fast when I knock."

With that he shoved us from the room which we sealed by closing its autodoor.

We couldn't see what the big hunk was doing but the telltale showed he'd

released and opened the door to the damaged section. Couple of seconds later

the light went out, showing the door had been closed again. Then came a hard,

urgent knock. We opened. Jay plunged through hell-for-leather with the

engineer's limp body cuddled in his huge arms. He bore it as if it were no

bigger and heavier than a kitten and the way he took it down the passage

threatened to carry him clear through the end of the ship.

Meanwhile we found we were in a first-class mess. The rockets weren't

functioning any more. The venturi tubes were okay and the combustion chambers

undamaged. The injectors worked without a hitch-providing that they were

pumped by hand. We had lost none of our precious fuel and the shell was intact

save for that one jagged hole. What made us useless was the wrecking of our

co-ordinated feeding and firing controls. They had been located where the big

bullet went through and now they were so much scrap.

This was more than serious. General opinion called it certain death though

nobody said so openly. I'm pretty certain that McNulty shared the morbid

notion even if his official report did under-describe it as "an embarrassing

predicament" That is just like McNulty. It's a wonder he didn't define our

feelings by recording that we were some- what nonplussed.

Anyway, the Martian squad poured out, some honest work being required of them

for the first time in six trips. Pressure had crawled back to fourteen pounds

and they had to come into it to be fitted with their head-and-shoulder

contraptions.

Kli Yang sniffed offensively, waved a disgusted tentacle and chirruped, "I

could swim " He eased up when we got his dingbat fixed and exhausted it to his

customary three pounds. That is the Martian idea of sarcasm: when- ever the

atmosphere is thicker than they like they make sinuous backstrokes and

declaim, "I could swim!"

To give them their due, they were good. A Martian can cling to polished ice

and work continuously for twelve hours on a ration of oxygen that wouldn't

satisfy a Terres- trial for more than ninety minutes. I watched them beat it

through the airlock, eyes goggling through inverted fish- bowls, their

tentacles clutching power lines, sealing plates and quasi-arc welders. Blue

lights made little auroras out- side the ports as they began to cut, shape and

close up that ragged hole.

All the time we continued to bullet sunward. But for this accursed misfortune

we'd have swung a curve into the orbit of Venus in four hours' time. Then we'd

have let her catch us up while we decelerated to a safe landing.

But when that peewee planetoid picked on us we were still heading for the

biggest and brightest furnace here- abouts. That was the way we continued to

go, our original velocity being steadily increased by the pull of our fiery

destination.

I wanted to be cremated-but not yet!

Up in the bow navigation-room Jay Score remained in constant conference with

Captain McNuIty and the two astro-computator operators. Outside, the Martians

con- tinued to crawl around, fizzing and spitting with flashes of ghastly blue

light. The engineers, of course, weren't wait- ing for them to finish their

job. Four in space-suits entered the wrecked section and started the task of

creating order out of chaos.

I envied all those busy guys and so did many others. There's a lot of

consolation in being able to do something even in an apparently hopeless

situation. There's a lot of misery in being compelled to play with one's

fingers while others are active.

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Eric Frank Russell - Jay Score

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