“Positive. But don’t let the fellows fool around. It would be just like them to hold out on a body. Just for laughs. Don’t let them.”
“You’ll have one as soon as we can manage. I imagine Hezekiah is out running down spare bodies.”
“It does beat all,” said Maximilian. “Here we had all the cargo down—a billion dollars’ worth of cargo and we hadn’t broken—”
“That’s the way it is, Max. You can’t beat the averages.”
Maximilian chuckled. “You human guys,” he said. “You always figure averages and have hunches and …”
Gideon came running out of the darkness. “Steve, we got to get those floater motors stopped. They’re running wild. One of them might blow.”
“But I thought you fellows—”
“Steve, it’s more than a spacehand job. It needs a nuclear technician.”
“Come with me.”
“Hey!” yelled Maximilian.
“I’ll be back,” said Sheridan.
At the tent, there was no sign of Hezekiah. Sheridan dug wildly through the transmog chest. He finally located a nuclear technician transmog.
“I guess you’re elected,” he said to Gideon.
“Okay,” the robot said. “But make it fast. One of those motors can blow and soak the entire area with radiation. It wouldn’t bother us much, but it would be tough on you.”
Sheridan clicked out the spacehand transmog, shoved the other in.
“Be seeing you,” said Gideon, dashing from the tent.
Sheridan stood staring at the scattered transmogs.
Hezekiah will give me hell, he thought.
Napoleon walked into the tent. He had his white apron tucked into the belt. His white cook’s hat was canted on his head.
“Steve,” he asked, “how would you like a cold supper for tonight?”
“I guess it would be all right.”
“That floater didn’t only hit the shack. It also flattened the stove.”
“A cold supper is fine. Will you do something for me?”
“What is it?”
“Max is out there, scared and busted up and lonely. He’ll feel better in the tent.”
Napoleon went out, grumbling: “Me, a chef, lugging a guy …”
Sheridan began picking up the transmogs, trying to get them racked back in order once again.
Hezekiah returned. He helped pick up the transmogs, began rearranging them.
“Lemuel will be all right, sir,” he assured Sheridan. “His nervous system was all tangled up and short-circuiting. They had to cut out great hunks of wiring. About all they have at the moment, sir, is a naked brain. It will take a while to get him back into a body and all hooked up correctly.”
“We came out lucky, Hezekiah.”
“I suppose you are right, sir. I imagine Napoleon told you about the stove.”
Napoleon came in, dragging the wreckage that was Maximilian, and propped it against the desk.
“Anything else?” he asked with withering sarcasm.
“No, thank you, Nappy. That is all.”
“Well,” demanded Maximilian, “how about my body?”
“It will take a while,” Sheridan told him. “The boys have their hands full with Lemuel. But he’s going to be all right.”
“That’s fine,” said Maximilian. “Lem is a damn good robot. It would be a shame to lose him.”
“We don’t lose many of you,” Sheridan observed.
“No,” said Maximilian. “We’re plenty tough. It takes a lot to destroy us.”
“Sir,” Hezekiah said, “you seem to be somewhat injured. Perhaps I should call in someone and put a medic transmog in him …”
“It’s all right,” said Sheridan. “Just a scratch. If you could find some water, so I could wash my face?”
“Certainly, sir. If it is only minor damage, perhaps I can patch you up.”
He went to find the water.
“That Hezekiah is a good guy, too,” said Maximilian, in an expansive mood. “Some of the boys think at times that he’s a sort of sissy, but he comes through in an emergency.”
“I couldn’t get along without Hezekiah,” Sheridan answered evenly. “We humans aren’t rough and tough like you. We need someone to look after us. Hezekiah’s job is in the very best tradition.”
“Well, what’s eating you?” asked Maximilian. “I said he was a good guy.”
Hezekiah came back with a can of water and a towel. “Here’s the water, sir. Gideon said to tell you the motors are okay. They have them all shut off.”
“I guess that just about buttons it all up—if they’re sure of Lemuel,” Sheridan said.
“Sir, they seemed very sure.”
“Well, fine,” said Maximilian, with robotic confidence. “Tomorrow morning we can start on the selling job.”
“I imagine so,” Sheridan said, standing over the can of water and taking off his jacket.
“This will be an easy one. We’ll be all cleaned up and out of here in ninety days or less.”
Sheridan shook his head. “No, Max. There’s no such thing as an easy one.”
He bent above the can and sloshed water on his face and head.
And that was true, he insisted to himself. An alien planet was an alien planet, no matter how you approached it. No matter how thorough the preliminary survey, no matter how astute the planning, there still would always be that lurking factor one could not foresee.
Maybe if a crew could stick to just one sort of job, he thought, it eventually might be possible to work out what amounted to a foolproof routine. But that was not the way it went when one worked for Central Trading.
Central Trading’s interests ran to many different things. Garson IV was sales. Next time it could just as well be a diplomatic mission or a health-engineering job. A man never knew what he and his crew of robots might be in for until he was handed his assignment.
He reached for the towel.
“You remember Carver VII?” he asked Maximilian.
“Sure, Steve. But that was just hard luck. It wasn’t Ebenezer’s fault he made that small mistake.”
“Moving the wrong mountain is not a small mistake,” Sheridan observed with pointed patience.
“That one goes right back to Central,” Maximilian declared, with a show of outrage. “They had the blueprints labeled wrong …”
“Now let’s hold it down,” Sheridan advised. “It is past and done with. There’s no sense in getting all riled up.”
“Maybe so,” said Maximilian, “but it burns me. Here we go and make ourselves a record no other team can touch. Then Central pulls this boner and pins the blame on us. I tell you, Central’s got too big and clumsy.”
And smug as well, thought Sheridan, but he didn’t say it. Too big and too complacent in a lot of ways. Take this very planet, for example. Central should have sent a trading team out here many years ago, but instead had fumed and fussed around, had connived and schemed; they had appointed committees to delve into the situation and there had been occasional mention of it at the meetings of the board, but there had been nothing done until the matter had ground its way through the full and awesome maze of very proper channels.
A little competition, Sheridan told himself, was the very thing that Central needed most. Maybe, if there were another outfit out to get the business, Central Trading might finally rouse itself off its big, fat dignity, he was thinking when Napoleon came clumping in and banged a plate and glass and bottle down upon the table. The plate was piled with cold cuts and sliced vegetables; the bottle contained beer.
Sheridan looked surprised. “I didn’t know we had beer.”
“Neither did I,” said Napoleon, “but I looked and there it was. Steve, it’s getting so you never know what is going on.”
Sheridan toss
ed away the towel and sat down at the desk. He poured a glass of beer.
“I’d offer you some of this,” he told Maximilian, “except I know it would rust your guts.”
Napoleon guffawed.
“Right as of this moment,” Maximilian said, “I haven’t any guts to speak of. Most of them’s dropped out.”
Abraham came tramping briskly in. “I hear you have Max hidden out some place.”
“Right here, Abe,” called Maximilian eagerly.
“You certainly are a mess,” said Abraham. “Here we were going fine until you two clowns gummed up the works.”
“How is Lemuel?” asked Sheridan.
“He’s all right,” said Abraham. “The other two are working on him and they don’t really need me. So I came hunting Max.” He said to Napoleon, “Here, grab hold and help me get him to the table. We have good light out there.”
Grumbling, Napoleon lent a hand. “I’ve lugged him around half the night,” he complained. “Let’s not bother with him. Let’s just toss him on the scrap heap.”
“It would serve him right,” Abraham agreed, with pretended wrath.
The two went out, carrying Maximilian between them. He still was dropping parts.
Hezekiah finished with the transmog chest, arranging all the transmogs neatly in their place. He closed the lid with some satisfaction.
“Now that we’re alone,” he said, “let me see your face.”
Sheridan grunted at him through a mouth stuffed full of food.
Hezekiah looked him over. “Just a scratch on the forehead, but the left side of your face, sir, looks as if someone had sandpapered it. You are sure you don’t want to transmog someone? A doctor should have a look at it.”
“Just leave it as it is,” said Sheridan. “It will be all right.”
Gideon stuck his head between the tent flaps. “Hezekiah, Abe is raising hell about the body you found for Max. He says it’s an old, rebuilt job. Have you got another one?”
“I can look and see,” said Hezekiah. “It was sort of dark. There are several more. We can look them over.”
He left with Gideon, and Sheridan was alone.
He went on eating, mentally checking through the happenings of the evening.
It had been hard luck, of course, but it could have been far worse. One had to expect accidents and headaches every now and then. After all, they had been downright lucky. Except for some lost time and a floater load of cargo, they had come out unscathed.
All in all, he assured himself, they’d made a good beginning. The cargo sled and ship were swinging in tight orbits, the cargo had been ferried down and on this small peninsula, jutting out into the lake, they had as much security as one might reasonably expect on any alien planet.
The Garsonians, of course, were not belligerent, but even so one could never afford to skip security.
He finished eating and pushed the plate aside. He pulled a portfolio out of a stack of maps and paperwork lying on the desk. Slowly he untied the tapes and slid the contents out. For the hundredth time, at least, he started going through the summary of reports brought back to Central Trading by the first two expeditions.
Man first had come to the planet more than twenty years ago to make a preliminary check, bringing back field notes, photographs and samples. It had been mere routine; there had been no thorough or extensive survey. There had been no great hope nor expectation; it had been simply another job to do. Many planets were similarly spot-checked, and in nineteen out of twenty of them, nothing ever came of it.
But something very definite had come of it in the case of Garson IV.
The something was a tuber that appeared quite ordinary, pretty much, in fact, like an undersize, shriveled-up potato. Brought back by the survey among other odds and ends picked up on the planet, it had in its own good time been given routine examination and analysis by the products laboratory—with startling results.
From the podar, the tuber’s native designation, had been derived a drug which had been given a long and agonizing name and had turned out to be the almost perfect tranquilizer. It appeared to have no untoward side-effects; it was not lethal if taken in too enthusiastic dosage; it was slightly habit-forming, a most attractive feature for all who might be concerned with the sale of it.
To a race vitally concerned with an increasing array of disorders traceable to tension, such a drug was a boon, indeed. For years, a search for such a tranquilizer had been carried on in the laboratories and here it suddenly was, a gift from a new-found planet.
Within an astonishingly short time, considering the deliberation with which Central Trading usually operated, a second expedition had been sent out to Garson IV, with the robotic team heavily transmogged as trade experts, psychologists and diplomatic functionaries. For two years the team had worked, with generally satisfactory results. When they had blasted off for Earth, they carried a cargo of the podars, a mass of meticulously gathered data and a trade agreement under which the Garsonians agreed to produce and store the podars against the day when another team should arrive to barter for them.
And that, thought Sheridan, is us.
And it was all right, of course, except that they were late by fifteen years.
For Central Trading, after many conferences, had decided to grow the podar on Earth. This, the economists had pointed out, would be far cheaper than making the long and expensive trips that would be necessary to import them from a distant planet. That it might leave the Garsonians holding the bag insofar as the trade agreement was concerned seemed not to have occurred to anyone at all. Although, considering the nature of the Garsonians, they probably had not been put out too greatly.
For the Garsonians were a shiftless tribe at best and it had been with some initial difficulty that the second team had been able to explain to them the mechanics and desirability of interstellar trade. Although, in fairness, it might be said of them that, once they understood it, they had been able to develop a creditable amount of eagerness to do business.
Podars had taken to the soil of Earth with commendable adaptiveness. They had grown bigger and better than they’d ever grown on their native planet. This was not surprising when one took into account the slap-dash brand of agriculture practiced by the Garsonians.
Using the tubers brought back by the second expedition for the initial crop, it required several years of growing before a sufficient supply of seed podars were harvested to justify commercial growing.
But finally that had come about and the first limited supply of the wonder drug had been processed and put on sale with wide advertising fanfare and an accompanying high price.
And all seemed well, indeed.
Once again the farmers of the Earth had gained a new cash crop from an alien planet. Finally Man had the tranquillizer which he’d sought for years.
But as the years went by, some of the enthusiasm dimmed. For the drug made from the podars appeared to lose its potency. Either it had not been as good as first believed or there was some factor lacking in its cultivation on Earth.
The laboratories worked feverishly on the problem. The podars were planted in experimental plots on other planets in the hope that the soil or air or general characteristics there might supply the needed element—if missing element it were.
And Central Trading, in its ponderous, bureaucratic fashion, began preliminary plans for importation of the tubers, remembering belatedly, perhaps, the trade agreement signed many years before. But the plans were not pushed too rapidly, for any day, it was believed, the answer might be found that would save the crop for Earth.
But when the answer came, it ruled out Earth entirely; it ruled out, in fact, every place but the podar’s native planet. For, the laboratories found, the continued potency of the drug relied to a large extent upon the chemical reaction of a protozoan which the podar plants nourished in their roots. And the
protozoan flourished, apparently, on Garson IV alone.
So finally, after more than fifteen years, the third expedition had started out for Garson IV. And had landed and brought the cargo down and now was ready, in the morning, to start trading for the podars.
Sheridan flipped idly through the sheets from the portfolio. There was, he thought, actually no need to look at all the data once again. He knew it all by heart.
The canvas rustled and Hezekiah stepped into the tent.
Sheridan looked up. “Good,” he said, “you’re back. Did you get Max fixed up?”
“We found a body, sir, that proved acceptable.”
Sheridan pushed the pile of reports aside. “Hezekiah, what are your impressions?”
“Of the planet, sir?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, it’s those barns, sir. You saw them, sir, when we were coming down. I believe I mentioned them to you.”
Sheridan nodded. “The second expedition taught the natives how to build them. To store the podars in.”
“All of them painted red,” the robot said. “Just like the barns we have on Christmas cards.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“They look a little weird, sir.”
Sheridan laughed. “Weird or not, those barns will be the making of us. They must be crammed with podars. For fifteen years, the natives have been piling up their podars, more than likely wondering when we’d come to trade …”
“There were all those tiny villages,” Hezekiah said, “and those big red barns in the village square. It looked, if you will pardon the observation, sir, like a combination of New England and Lower Slobbovia.”
“Well, not quite Lower Slobbovia. Our Garsonian friends are not as bad as that. They may be somewhat shiftless and considerably scatterbrained, but they keep their villages neat and their houses spic and span.”
He pulled a photograph from a pile of data records. “Here, take a look at this.”
The photograph showed a village street, neat and orderly and quiet, with its rows of well-kept houses huddled underneath the shade trees. There were rows of gay flowers running along the roadway and there were people—little, happy, gnomelike people—walking in the road.