A Tenderfoot in Space Read online

  So far he had had one glimpse outdoors -- a permanently cloudy sky which never got dark and was never very bright. Borealis is at Venus's north pole and the axis of the planet is nearly erect; the unseen Sun circled the horizon, never rising nor setting by more than a few degrees. The colony lived in eternal twilight.

  The lessened gravity, nine-tenths that of Earth, Charlie did not notice even though he knew he should. It had been five months since he had felt Earth gravity and the Hesperus had maintained only one-third gravity in that outer part, where spin was most felt. Consequently Charlie felt heavier than seemed right, rather than lighter -- his feet had forgotten full weight.

  Nor did he notice the heavy concentration (about 2%) of carbon dioxide in the air, on which Venus's mighty jungles depended. It had once been believed that so much carbon dioxide, breathed regularly, would kill a man, but long before space flight, around 1950, experiments had shown that even a higher concentration had no bad effects. Charlie simply didn't notice it.

  All in all, he might have been waiting in a dreary, barracks-like building in some tropical port on Earth. He did not see much of his father, who was busy by telephone and by germproof conference cage, conferring with his new employers and arranging for quarters, nor did he see much of his mother; Mrs. Vaughn had found the long trip difficult and was spending most of her time lying down.

  Nine days after their arrival Charlie was sitting in the recreation room of the reception center, disconsolately reading a book he had already read on Earth. His father came in. "Come along."

  "Huh? What's up?"

  "They're going to try to revive your dog. You want to be there, don't you? Or maybe you'd rather not? I can go...and come back and tell you what happened."

  Charlie gulped. "I want to be there. Let's go."

  The room was like the one back at White Sands where Nixie had been put to sleep, except that in place of the table there was a cage-like contraption with glass sides. A man was making adjustments on a complex apparatus which stood next to the glass box and was connected to it. He looked up. "Yes? We're busy."

  "My name is Vaughn and this is my son Charlie. He's the owner of the dog."

  The man frowned. "Didn't you get my message? I'm Doctor Zecker, by the way. You're too soon; we're just bringing the dog up to temperature."

  Mr. Vaughn said, "Wait here, Charlie," crossed the room and spoke in a low voice to Zecker.

  Zecker shook his head. "Better wait outside."

  Mr. Vaughn again spoke quietly; Dr~ Zecker answered, "You don't understand. I don't even have proper equipment -- I've had to adapt the force breather we use for hospital monkeys. It was never meant for a dog."

  They argued in whispers for a few moments. They were interrupted by an amplified voice from outside the room "Ready with ninety-seven-X, Doctor -- that's the dog."

  Zecker called back, "Bring it in!" -- then went on to Mr. Vaughn, "All right -- keep him out of the way. Though I still say he would be better off outside." He turned, paid them no further attention.

  Two men, came in, carrying a large tray. Something quiet and not very large was heaped on it, covered by dull blue cloth. Charlie whispered, "Is that Nixie?"

  "I think so," his father-answered in a low voice. "Keep quiet and watch."

  "Can't I see him?"

  "Stay where you are and don't say a word -- else the doctOr will make you leave."

  Once inside, the team moved quickly and without speaking, as if this were something rehearsed again and again, something that must be done with great speed and perfect precision. One of them Opened the glass box; the other placed the tray inside, uncovered its burden. It was Nixie, limp and apparently dead. Charlie caught his breath.

  One assistant moved the little body forward, fitted a collar around its neck, closed down a partition like a guillotine, jerked his hands out of the way as the other assistant slammed the glass door through which they had put the dog in, quickly sealed it. Now Nixie was shut tight in a -- glass coffin, his head lying outside the end partition, his body inside. "Cycle!"

  Even as he said it, the first assistant slapped a switch and fixed his eyes on the instrument board and Doctor Zecker thrust both arms into long rubber gloves passing through the glass, which allowed his hands to be inside with Nixie's body. With rapid, sure motions he picked up a hypodermic needle, already waiting inside, shoved it deep jnto the dog's side.

  "Force breathing established."'

  "No heart action, Doctor!"

  The reports came one on top of the other, Zecker looked up at the dials, looked back at the dog and cursed. He grabbed another needle. This one he entered gently, depressed the plunger most carefully, with his eyes on the dials. "Fibrillation."

  "I can see!" he answered snappishly, put down the hypo and began to massage the dog in time with the ebb and surge of the "iron lung."

  And Nixie lifted his head and cried.

  It was more than an hour before Dr. Zecker let Charlie take the dog away. During most of this time the cage was open and Nixie was breathing on his own, but with the apparatus still in place, ready to start again if his heart or lungs should falter in their newly relearned trick of keeping him alive. But during this waiting time Charlie was allowed -- to stand beside him, touch him, sooth and pet him to keep him quiet.

  At last the doctor picked up Nixie and put him in Charlie's arms. "Okay, take him. But keep him quiet; I don't want him running around for the next ten hours. But not too quiet, don't let him sleep."

  "Why not, Doctor?" asked Mr. Vaughn.

  "Because sometimes, when you think they've made it, they just lie down and quit -- as if they had had a taste of death and fOund they liked it. This pooch has had a' near squeak -- we have only seven minutes to restore blood supply to the brain. Any longer than that...well, the brain is permanently damaged and you might as well put it out of its misery."

  "You think you made it in time?"

  "Do you think," Zecker answered angrily, "that I would let you take the dog if I hadn't?"

  "Sorry."

  "Just keep him quiet, but not too quiet. Keep him awake."

  Charlie answered solemnly, "I will, Doctor Nixie's going to be all right -- I know he is."

  Charlie stayed awake all night long, talking to Nixie, petting him, keeping him quiet but not -- asleep. Neither one of his parents tried to get him to go to bed.

  II

  Nixie liked Venus. It was filled with a thousand new smells, all worth investigating, countless new sounds, each of which had to be catalogued. As official guardian of the Vaughn family and of Charlie in particular, it was his duty and pleasure to examine each new phenomenon, decide whether or not it was safe for his people; he set about it happily. --

  It is doubtful that he realized that he had traveled other than -- that first lap in -- the traveling case to White Sands. He took up his new routine without noticing the five months clipped out of his life; he took charge of the apartment assigned to the Vaughn family, inspected it -- thoroughly, then nightly checked it to be sure that all was in order and safe before he tromped out his place on the foot of Charlie's bed and tucked his tail over his nose.

  He was aware that this was a new place, but he was not homesick. The other home had been satisfactory and he had never dreamed of leaving it, but this new home was still better. Not only did it have Charlie -- without whom no place could be home -- not only did it have wonderfu] odors, but also he found the people more agreeable. Iii the past, many humans had been quite stuffy aboul flower beds and such trivia, but here he was almost nevei scolded or chased away; on the contrary people were anxious to speak to him, pet him, feed him. His popular. ity was based on arithmetic: Borealis had fifty-five thou. sand people but only eleven dogs; many colonists were homesick for man's traditional best friend. Nixie did nol know this, but he had great capacity for enjoying the good things in life without worrying about why.

  Mr. Vaughn found Venus satisfactory. His work foi Synthetics of Venus, Ltd. was the sort of
work he had done on Earth, save that he was now paid more and given more responsibility. The living quarters provided by the company were as comfortable as the house he had left back on Earth and he was unworried about the future of his family for the first time in years.

  Mrs. Vaughn found Venus bearable but she was homesick much of the time.

  Charlie, once he was over first the worry and then the delight of waking Nixie, found Venus interesting, less strange than he had expected, and from time to time he was homesick. But before long he was no longer homesick; Venus was home. He knew now what he wanted to be: a pioneer. When he was grown he would head south, deep into the unmapped jungle, carve out a plantation.

  The jungle was the greatest single fact about Venus. The colony lived on the bountiful produce of the jungle. The land on which Borealis sat, buildings and spaceport, had been torn away from the hungry jungle only by flaming it dead, stabilizing the muck with gel-forming chemicals, and poisoning the land thus claimed -- then flaming, cutting, or poisoning any hardy survivor that pushed its green nose up through the captured soil.

  The Vaughn family lived in a large apartment building which sat on land newly captured. Facing their front door, a mere hundred feet away across scorched and poisoned soil, a great shaggy dark-green wall loomed higher than the buffer space between. But the mindless jungle never gave up. The vines, attracted by light -- their lives were spent competing for light energy -- felt their way into the open space, tred to fill it. They grew with incredible speed. One day after breakfast Mr. Vaughn tried to go out his own front door, found his way hampered. While they had slept a vine had grown across the hundred-foot belt, supporting itself by tendrils. against the dead soil, and had started up the front of the building. --

  The police patrol of the city were armed with flame guns and spent most of their time cutting back such hardy intruders. While they had power to enforce the law, they rarely made an arrest. Borealis was a city almost free of crime; the humans were too busy fighting nature in the raw to require much attention from policemen.

  But the jungle was friend as well as enemy. Its lusty life offered food for millions and billions of humans in place of the few thousands already on Venus. Under the jungle lay beds of peat, still farther down were thick coal seams representing millions of years of lush jungle growth, and pools of oil waiting to be tapped. Aerial survey by jet-copter in the volcanic regions promised uranium and thorium when man could cut his way through and get at it. The planet offered unlimited wealth. But it did not offer it to sissies.

  Charlie quickly bumped his nose into one respect in which Venus was not for sissies. His father placed him in school, he was assigned to a grade taught by Mr. deSoto. The school room was not attractive -- "grim" was the word Charlie used, but he was not surprised, as most buildings in Borealis were unattractive, being constructed either of spongy logs or of lignin panels made from jungle growth.

  But the school itself was "grim." Charlie had been humiliated by being placed one grade lower than he had expected; now he found that the lessons were stiff and that Mr. deSoto did not have the talent, or perhaps the wish to make them fun. Resentfully, Charlie loafed.

  After three weeks Mr. deSoto kept him in after school. "Charlie, what's wrong?"

  "Huh? I mean, 'Sir?"

  "You know what I mean. You've been in my class nearly a month. You haven't learned anything. Don't you want to?"

  "What? Why, sure I do."

  "Surely' in that usage, not 'sure.' Very well, so you want tO learn; why haven't you?"

  Charlie stood silent. He wanted to tell Mr. deSoto what a swell place Horace Mann Junior High School had been, with its teams and its band and its student plays and its student council (this crazy school didn't even have a student council!), and its study projects picked by the kids themselves, and the Spring Outburst and Sneak Day...and -- oh, shucks!

  But Mr. deSoto was speaking. "Where did you last go to school, Charlie?"

  Charlie stared. Didn't the teacher even bother to read his transcript? But he told him and added, "I was a year farther along there. I guess I'm bored, having to repeat."

  "I think you are, too, but I don't agree that you are repeating. They had an eighteen-year Jaw there, didn't they?"

  "Sir?"

  "You were required to attend school until you were eighteen Earth-years old?"

  "Oh, that! Sure. I mean 'surely.' Everybody goes to school until he's eighteen. That's to 'discourage juvenile delinquency," he quoted.

  "I wonder. Nobody ever flunked, I suppose."

  "Sir?"

  "Failed. Nobody ever got tossed out of school or left back for failing his studies?"

  "Of course not, Mr. deSoto. You have to keep age groups together, or they don't develop socially as they should."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Why, everybody knows that. I've been hearing that ever since I was in kindergarten. That's what education is for -- social development."

  Mr. deSoto leaned back, rubbed his nose. Presently he said slowly; "Charlie, this isn't that kind of a school at all."

  Charlie waited. He was annoyed at not being invited to sit down and was wondering what would happen if he sat down anyway.

  "In the first place we don't have the eighteen-year rule. You can quit school today. You know how to read. Your handwriting is sloppy but it will do. You are quick in arithmetic. You can't spell worth a hoot, but that's your misfortune; the city fathers don't care whether you learn to spell or not. You've got all the education the City of Borealis feels obliged to give you. If you want to take a flame gun and start carving out your chunk of the jungle, nobody is standing in your way. I can write a note to the Board of Education, telling them that Charles Vaughn, Jr. has gone as far as he ever will. You needn't come back tomorrow."

  Charlie gulped. He had never heard of anyone being dropped from school for anything less than a knife fight. It was unthinkable -- what would his folks say?

  "On the other hand," Mr. deSoto went on, "Venus needs educated citizens. We'll keep anybody as long as they keep learning. The city will even send you back to Earth for advanced training if you are worth it, because we need scientists and engineers...and more teachers. But this is a struggling new community and it doesn't have a penny to waste on kids who won't study. We do flunk them in this school. If you don't study, we'll lop you off so fast you'll think you've been trimmed with a flame gun. We're not running the sort of overgrown kindergarten you were in. It's up to you. Buckle down and learn...or get out. So go home and talk it over with your folks."

  Charlie was stunned. "Uh...Mr. deSoto? Are you going to talk to my father?"

  "What? Heavens, no! You are their responsibility, not mine. I don't care what you do. That's all. Go home."

  Charlie went home, slowly. He did not talk it over with his parents. Instead he went back to school and studied. In a few weeks he discovered that even algebra could be interesting...and that old Frozen Face was an interesting teacher when Charlie had studied hard enough to know what the man was talking about.

  Mr. deSoto never mentioned the matter again.

  Getting back in the Scouts was more fun but even Scouting held surprises. Mr. Qu'an, Scoutmaster of Troop Four, welcomed him heartily. "Glad to have-you, Chuck. It makes me feel good when a Scout among the new citizens comes forward and says be wants to pick up the Scouting trail again." He looked over the letter Charlie had brought with him. "A good record -- Star Scout at your age. Keep at it and you'll be a Double Star...both Earth and Venus."

  "You mean," Charlie said slowly, "that I'm not a Star Scout here?"

  "Eh? Not at all." Mr. Qu'an touched the badge on Charlie's jacket. "You won that fairly and a Court of Honor has certified you. You'll always be a Star Scout, just as a pilot is entitled to wear his comet after he's too old to herd a space ship. But let's be practical. Ever been out in the jungle?"

  "Not yet, sir. But I always was good at woodcraft~"

  "Mmm...Ever camped in the Florida Everglades?"
>
  "Well...no~ sir."

  "No matter. I simply wanted to point out that while the Everglades are jungle, they are an open desert compared with the jungle here. And the coral snakes and water moccasins in the Everglades are harmless little pets alongside some of the things here. Have you seen our dragonflies yet?"

  "Well, a dead one, at school."

  "That's the best way to see them. When you see a live one, better see it first,...if it's a female and ready to lay eggs."

  "Uh, I know about them. If you fight them off, they won't sting."

  "Which is why you had better see them first."

  "Mr. Qu'an? Are they really that big?"

  "I've seen thirty-six-inch wing spreads. What I'm trying to say, Chuck, is that a lot of men have died learning the tricks of this jungle. If you are as smart as a Star Scout is supposed to be, you won't assume that you know what these poor fellows didn't. You'll wear that badge...but you'll class yourself in your mind as a tenderfoot ,all over again, and you won't be in a hurry about promoting yourself."

  Charlie swallowed it. "Yes, sir. I'll try."

  "Good. We use the buddy system -- you take care of your buddy and he takes care of you. I'll team you with Hans Kuppenheimer. Hans is only a Second Class Scout, but don't let that fool you. He was born here and he lives in the bush, on his father's plantation. He's the best jungle rat in the troop."

  Charlie said nothing, but resolved to become a real jungle rat himself, fast. Being under the wing of a Scout who was merely second class did not appeal to him.

  But Hans turned out to be easy to get along with. He was quiet, shorter but stockier than Charlie, neither unfriendly nor chummy; he simply accepted the assignment to look after Charlie. But he startled Charlie by answering, when asked, that he was twenty-three years old.

  It left Charlie speechless long enough for him to realize that Hans, born here, meant Venus years, each only two hundred twenty-five Earth days. Charlie decided thai Hans was about his own age, which seemed reasonable. Time had been a subject which had confused Charlie ever since his arrival. The Venus day was only seven minutes different from that of Earth -- he had merely had to have his wristwatch adjusted. But the day itself had not meant what it used to mean, because day and night at the north pole of Venus looked alike, a soft twilight.