The Past Through Tomorrow Page 45

  The air within the tunnel was still acrid from the atomized antiseptic with which it had been flushed out, but to Wingate it was nevertheless fresh and stimulating after the stale flatness of the repeatedly reconditioned air of the transport. That, plus the surface gravity of Venus, five-sixths of earth-normal, strong enough to prevent nausea yet low enough to produce a feeling of lightness and strength—these things combined to give him an irrational optimism, an up-and-at-‘em frame of mind.

  The exit from the tunnel gave into a moderately large room, windowless but brilliantly and glarelessly lighted from concealed sources. It contained no furniture.

  “Squaaad—HALT!” called out the Master-at-Arms, and handed papers to a slight, clerkish-appearing man who stood near an inner doorway. The man glanced at the papers, counted the detachment, then signed one sheet, which he handed back to the ship’s petty officer who accepted it and returned through the tunnel.

  The clerkish man turned to the immigrants. He was dressed, Wingate noted, in nothing but the briefest of shorts, hardly more than a strap, and his entire body, even his feet, was a smooth mellow tan. “Now men,” he said in a mild voice, “strip off your clothes and put them in the hopper.” He indicated a fixture set in one wall.

  “Why?” asked Wingate. His manner was uncontentious but he made no move to comply.

  “Come now,” he was answered, still mildly but with a note of annoyance, “don’t argue. It’s for your own protection. We can’t afford to import disease.”

  Wingate checked a reply and unzipped his coverall. Several who had paused to hear the outcome followed his example. Suits, shoes, underclothing, socks, they all went into the hopper. “Follow me,” said their guide.

  In the next room the naked herd were confronted by four “barbers” armed with electric clippers and rubber gloves who proceeded to clip them smooth. Again Wingate felt disposed to argue, but decided the issue was not worth it. But he wondered if the female labor clients were required to submit to such drastic quarantine precautions. It would be a shame, it seemed to him, to sacrifice a beautiful head of hair that had been twenty years in growing.

  The succeeding room was a shower room. A curtain of warm spray completely blocked passage through the room. Wingate entered it unreluctantly, even eagerly, and fairly wallowed in the first decent bath he had been able to take since leaving Earth. They were plentifully supplied with liquid green soap, strong and smelly, but which lathered freely. Half a dozen attendants, dressed as skimpily as their guide, stood on the far side of the wall of water and saw to it that the squad remained under the shower a fixed time and scrubbed. In some cases they made highly personal suggestions to insure thoroughness. Each of them wore a red cross on a white field affixed to his belt which lent justification to their officiousness.

  Blasts of warm air in the exit passageway dried them quickly and completely.

  “Hold still.” Wingate complied, the bored hospital orderly who had spoken dabbed at Wingate’s upper arm with a swab which felt cold to touch, then scratched the spot. “That’s all, move on.” Wingate added himself to the queue at the next table. The experience was repeated on the other arm. By the time he had worked down to the far end of the room the outer sides of each arm were covered with little red scratches, more than twenty of them.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked the hospital clerk at the end of the line, who had counted his scratches and checked his name off a list.

  “Skin tests… to check your resistances and immunities.”

  “Resistance to what?”

  “Anything. Both terrestrial and Venerian diseases. Fungoids, the Venus ones are, mostly. Move on, you’re holding up the line.” He heard more about it later. It took from two to three weeks to recondition the ordinary terrestrial to Venus conditions. Until that reconditioning was complete and immunity was established to the new hazards of another planet it was literally death to an Earth man to expose his skin and particularly his mucous membranes to the ravenous invisible parasites of the surface of Venus.

  The ceaseless fight of life against life which is the dominant characteristic of life anywhere proceeds with especial intensity, under conditions of high metabolism, in the steamy jungles of Venus. The general bacteriophage which has so nearly eliminated disease caused by pathogenic microorganisms on Earth was found capable of a subtle modification which made it potent against the analogous but different diseases of Venus. The hungry fungi were another matter.

  Imagine the worst of the fungoid-type skin diseases you have ever encountered—ringworm, dhobie itch, athlete’s foot, Chinese rot, saltwater itch, seven year itch. Add to that your conception of mold, of damp rot, of scale, of toadstools feeding on decay. Then conceive them speeded up in their processes, visibly crawling as you watch—picture them attacking your eyeballs, your armpits, the soft wet tissues inside your mouth, working down into your lungs.

  The first Venus expedition was lost entirely. The second had a surgeon with sufficient imagination to provide what seemed a liberal supply of salicylic acid and mercury salicylate as well as a small ultraviolet radiator. Three of them returned.

  But permanent colonization depends on adaptation to environment, not insulating against it. Luna City might be cited as a case which denies this proposition but it is only superficially so. While it is true that the ‘lunatics“ are absolutely dependent on their citywide hermetically-sealed air bubble, Luna City is not a self-sustaining colony; it is an outpost, useful as a mining station, as an observatory, as a refueling stop beyond the densest portion of Terra’s gravitational field.

  Venus is a colony. The colonists breathe the air of Venus, eat its food, and expose their skins to its climate and natural hazards. Only the cold polar regions—approximately equivalent in weather conditions to an Amazonian jungle on a hot day in the rainy season—are tenable by terrestrials, but here they slop barefooted on the marshy soil in a true ecological balance.

  Wingate ate the meal that was offered him—satisfactory but roughly served and dull, except for Venus sweet-sour melon, the portion of which he ate would have fetched a price in a Chicago gourmets’ restaurant equivalent to the food budget for a week of a middle-class family—and located his assigned sleeping billet. Thereafter he attempted to locate Sam Houston Jones. He could find no sign of him among the other labor clients, nor any one who remembered having seen him. He was advised by one of the permanent staff of the conditioning station to enquire of the factor’s clerk.

  This he did, in the ingratiating manner he had learned it was wise to use in dealing with minor functionaries.

  “Come back in the morning. The lists will be posted.”

  “Thank you, sir. Sorry to have bothered you, but I can’t find him and I was afraid he might have taken sick or something. Could you tell me if he is on the sick list.”

  “Oh, well— Wait a minute.” The clerk thumbed through his records. “Hmmm… you say he was in the Evening Star?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, he’s not… Mmmm, no— Oh, yes, here he is. He didn’t disembark here.”

  “What did you say! ?”

  “He went on with the Evening Star to New Auckland, South Pole. He’s stamped in as a machinist’s helper. If you had told me that, I’d ‘a’ known. All the metal workers in this consignment were sent to work on the new South Power Station.”

  After a moment Wingate pulled himself together enough to murmur, “Thanks for your trouble.”

  “ ‘S all right. Don’t mention it.” The clerk turned away.

  South Pole Colony! He muttered it to himself. South Pole Colony, his only friend twelve thousand miles away. At last Wingate felt alone, ‘Alone and trapped, abandoned. During the short interval between waking up aboard the transport and finding Jones also aboard he had not had time fully to appreciate his predicament, nor had he, then, lost his upper class arrogance, the innate conviction that it could not be serious—such things just don’t happen to people, not to people one knows!

/>   But in the meantime he had suffered such assaults to his human dignity (the Chief Master-at-Arms had seen to some of it) that he was no longer certain of his essential inviolability from unjust or arbitrary treatment. But now, shaved and bathed without his consent, stripped of his clothing and attired in a harnesslike breechclout, transported millions of miles from his social matrix, subject to the orders of persons indifferent to his feelings and who claimed legal control over his person and actions, and now, most bitterly, cut off from the one human contact which had given him support and courage and hope, he realized at last with chilling thoroughness that anything could happen to him, to him, Humphrey Belmont Wingate, successful attorney-at-law and member of all the right clubs.

  “Wingate!”

  “That’s you, Jack. Go on in, don’t keep them waiting.” Wingate pushed through the doorway and found himself in a fairly crowded room. Thirty-odd men were seated around the sides of the room. Near the door a clerk sat at a desk, busy with papers. One brisk-mannered individual stood in the cleared space between the chairs near a low platform on which all the illumination of the room was concentrated. The clerk at the door looked up to say, “Step up where they can see you.” He pointed a stylus at the platform.

  Wingate moved forward and did as he was bade, blinking at the brilliant light. “Contract number 482-23-06,” read the clerk, “client Humphrey Wingate, six years, radio technician non-certified, pay grade six-D, contract now available for assignment.” Three weeks it had taken them to condition him, three weeks with no word from Jones. He had passed his exposure test without infection; he was about to enter the active period of his indenture. The brisk man spoke up close on the last words of the clerk:

  “Now here, patrons, if you please—we have an exceptionally promising man. I hardly dare tell you the ratings he received on his intelligence, adaptability, and general information tests. In fact I won’t, except to tell you that Administration has put in a protective offer of a thousand credits. But it would be a shame to use any such client for the routine work of administration when we need good men so badly to wrest wealth from the wilderness. I venture to predict that the lucky bidder who obtains the services of this client will be using him as a foreman within a month. But look him over for yourselves, talk to him, and see for yourselves.”

  The clerk whispered something to the speaker. He nodded and added, “I am required to notify you, gentlemen and patrons, that this client has given the usual legal notice of two weeks, subject of course to liens of record.” He laughed jovially, and cocked one eyebrow as if there were some huge joke behind his remarks. No one paid attention to the announcement; to a limited extent Wingate appreciated wryly the nature of the jest. He had given notice the day after he found out that Jones had been sent to South Pole Colony, and had discovered that while he was free theoretically to quit, it was freedom to starve on Venus, unless he first worked out his bounty, and his passage both ways.

  Several of the patrons gathered around the platform and looked him over, discussing him as they did so. “Not too well muscled.”

  “I’m not over-eager to bid on these smart boys; they’re trouble-makers.”

  “No, but a stupid client isn’t worth his keep.”

  “What can he do? I’m going to have a look at his record.” They drifted over to the clerk’s desk and scrutinized the results of the many tests and examinations that Wingate had undergone during his period of quarantine. All but one beady-eyed individual who sidled up closer to Wingate, and, resting one foot on the platform so that he could bring his face nearer, spoke in confidential tones.

  “I’m not interested in those phony puff-sheets, bub. Tell me about yourself.”

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “Loosen up. You’ll like my place. Just like a home—I run a free crock to Venusburg for my boys. Had any experience handling niggers?”

  “No.”

  “Well, the natives ain’t niggers anyhow, except in a manner of speaking. You look like you could boss a gang. Had any experience?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well… maybe you’re modest. I like a man who keeps his mouth shut. And my boys like me. I never let my pusher take kickbacks.”

  “No,” put in another patron who had returned to the side of the platform, “you save that for yourself, Rigsbee.”

  “You stay out o‘ this, Van Huysen!”

  The newcomer, a heavy-set, middle-aged man, ignored the other and addressed Wingate himself. “You have given notice. Why?”

  “The whole thing was a mistake. I was drunk.”

  “Will you do honest work in the meantime?”

  Wingate considered this. “Yes,” he said finally. The heavy-set man nodded and walked heavily back to his chair, settling his broad girth with care and giving his harness a hitch.

  When the others were seated the spokesman announced cheerfully, “Now, gentlemen, if you are quite through— Let’s hear an opening offer for this contract. I wish I could afford to bid him in as my assistant, by George, I do! Now… do I hear an offer?”

  “Six hundred.”

  “Please, patrons! Did you not hear me mention a protection of one thousand?”

  “I don’t think you mean it. He’s a sleeper.”

  The company agent raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry. I’ll have to ask the client to step down from the platform.”

  But before Wingate could do so another voice said, “One thousand.”

  “Now that’s better!” exclaimed the agent. “I should have known that you gentlemen wouldn’t let a real opportunity escape you. But a ship can’t fly on one jet. Do I hear eleven hundred? Come, patrons, you can’t make your fortunes without clients. Do I hear—”

  “Eleven hundred.”

  “Eleven hundred from Patron Rigsbee! And a bargain it would be at that price. But I doubt if you will get it. Do I hear twelve?”

  The heavy-set man flicked a thumb upward. “Twelve hundred from Patron van Huysen. I see I’ve made a mistake and am wasting your time; the intervals should be not less than two hundred. Do I hear fourteen? Do I hear fourteen? Going once for twelve… going twi—”

  “Fourteen,” Rigsbee said sullenly.

  “Seventeen,” Van Huysen added at once.

  “Eighteen,” snapped Rigsbee.

  “Nooo,” said the agent, “no interval of less than two, please.”

  “All right, dammit, nineteen!”

  “Nineteen I hear. It’s a hard number to write; who’ll make it twenty-one?” Van Huysen’s thumb flicked again. “Twenty-one it is. It takes money to make money. What do I hear? What do I hear?” He paused. “Going once for twenty-one… going twice for twenty-one. Are you giving up so easily, Patron Rigsbee?”

  “Van Huysen is a—” The rest was muttered too indistinctly to hear.

  “One more chance, gentlemen. Going, going… GONE!—” He smacked his palms sharply together, “—and sold to Patron van Huysen for . twenty-one hundred credits. My congratulations, sir, on a shrewd deal.”

  Wingate followed his new master out the far door. They were stopped in the passageway by Rigsbee. “All right, Van, you’ve had your fun. I’ll cut your losses for two thousand.”

  “Out of my way.”

  “Don’t be a fool. He’s no bargain. You don’t know how to sweat a man— I do.” Van Huysen ignored him, pushing on past. Wingate followed him out into warm winter drizzle to the parking lot where steel crocodiles were drawn up in parallel rows. Van Huysen paused beside a thirty-foot Remington. “Get in.”

  The long boxlike body of the crock was stowed to its load line with supplies Van Huysen had purchased at the base. Sprawled on the tarpaulin which covered the cargo were half a dozen men. One of them stirred as Wingate climbed over the side. “Hump! Oh, Hump!”

  It was Hartley. Wingate was surprised at his own surge of emotion. He gripped Hartley’s hand and exchanged friendly insults. “Chums,” said Hartley, “meet Hump Wingate. He’s a right guy. Hump, meet the
gang. That’s Jimmie right behind you. He rassles this velocipede.”

  The man designated gave Wingate a bright nod and moved forward into the operator’s seat. At a wave from Van Huysen, who had seated his bulk in the little sheltered cabin aft, he pulled back on both control levers and the crocodile crawled away, its caterpillar treads clanking and chunking through the mud.

  Three of the six were old-timers, including Jimmie, the driver. They had come along to handle cargo, the ranch products which the patron had brought in to market and the supplies he had purchased to take back. Van Huysen had bought the contracts of two other clients in addition to Wingate and Satchel Hartley. Wingate recognized them as men he had known casually in the Evening Star and at the assignment and conditioning station. They looked a little woebegone, which Wingate could thoroughly understand, but the men from the ranch seemed to be enjoying themselves. They appeared to regard the opportunity to ride a load to and from town as an outing. They sprawled on the tarpaulin and passed the time gossiping and getting acquainted with the new chums.

  But they asked no personal questions. No labor client on Venus ever asked anything about what he had been before he shipped with the company unless he first volunteered information. It “wasn’t done.”

  Shortly after leaving the outskirts of Adonis the car slithered down a sloping piece of ground, teetered over a low bank, and splashed logily into water. Van Huysen threw up a window in the bulkhead which separated the cabin from the hold and shouted, “Dumkopf! How many times do I tell you to take those launchings slowly?”

  “Sorry, Boss,” Jimmie answered. “I missed it.”

  “You keep your eyes peeled, or I get me a new Crocker!” He slammed the port. Jimmie glanced around and gave the other clients a sly wink. He had his hands full; the marsh they were traversing looked like solid ground, so heavily was it overgrown with rank vegetation. The crocodile now functioned as a boat, the broad flanges of the treads acting as paddle wheels. The wedge-shaped prow pushed shrubs and marsh grass aside, or struck and ground down small trees. Occasionally the lugs would bite into the mud of a shoal bottom, and, crawling over a bar, return temporarily to the status of a land vehicle. Jimmie’s slender, nervous hands moved constantly over the controls, avoiding large trees and continually seeking the easiest, most nearly direct route, while he split his attention between the terrain and the craft’s compass.