Logic Of Empire By Robert A. Heinlein

Logic of Empire
‘Don’t be a sentimental fool, Sam!’
‘Sentimental, or not,’ Jones persisted, ‘I know human slavery when I see it. That’s what you’ve got on Venus.’
Humphrey Wingate snorted. ‘That’s utterly ridiculous. The company’s labor clients are employees, working under legal contracts, freely entered into.’
Jones’ eyebrows raised slightly. ‘So? What kind of a contract is it that throws a man into jail if he quits his job?’
‘That’s not the case. Any client can quit his job on the usual two weeks notice-I ought to know; I -‘
‘Yes, I know,’ agreed Jones in a tired voice. ‘You’re a lawyer. You know all about contracts. But the trouble with you, you dunderheaded fool, is that all you understand is legal phrases. Free contract-nuts! What I’m talking about is facts, not legalisms. I don’t care what the contract says-those people are slaves!’
Wingate emptied his glass and set it down. ‘So I’m a dunderheaded fool, am I? Well, I’ll tell you what you are, Sam Houston Jones-you are a half-baked parlor pink. You’ve never had to work for a living in your life and you think it’s just too dreadful that anyone else should have to. No, wait a minute,’ he continued, as Jones opened his mouth, ‘listen to me. The company’s clients on Venus are a damn sight better off than most people of their own class here on Earth. They are certain of a job, of food, and a place to sleep. If they get sick, they’re certain of medical attention. The trouble with people of that class is that they don’t want to work -,
‘Who does?’
‘Don’t be funny. The trouble is, if they weren’t under a fairly tight contract, they’d throw up a good job the minute they got bored with it and expect the company to give ‘em a free ride back to Earth. Now it may not have occurred to your fine, free charitable mind, but the company has obligations to its stockholders-you, for instance!-and it can’t afford to run an interplanetary ferry for the benefit of a class of people that feel that the world owes them a living.’
‘You got me that time, pal,’ Jones acknowledged with a wry face, ‘-that crack about me being a stockholder. I’m ashamed of it.’
‘Then why don’t you sell?’
Jones looked disgusted. ‘What kind of a solution is that? Do you think I can avoid the responsibility of knowing about it just unloading my stock?’
‘Oh, the devil with it,’ said Wingate. ‘Drink up.’
‘Righto,’ agreed Jones. It was his first night aground after a practice cruise as a reserve officer; he needed to catch up on his drinking. Too bad, thought Wingate, that the cruise should have touched at Venus-‘All out! All out! Up aaaall you idlers! Show a leg there! Show a leg and grab a sock!’ The raucous voice sawed its way through Wingate’s aching head. He opened his eyes, was blinded by raw white light, and shut them hastily.
But the voice would not let him alone. ‘Ten minutes till breakfast,’ it rasped. ‘Come and get it, or we’ll throw it out!’
He opened his eyes again, and with trembling willpower forced them to track. Legs moved past his eyes, denim clad legs mostly, though some were bare-repulsive hairy nakedness. A confusion of male voices, from which he could catch words but not sentences, was accompanied by an obbligato of metallic sounds, muffled but pervasive-shrrg, shrrg, thump! Shrrg, shrrg, thump! The thump with which the cycle was completed hurt his
aching head but was not as nerve stretching as another noise, a toneless whirring sibilance which he could neither locate nor escape.
The air was full of the odor of human beings, too many of them in too small a space. There was nothing so distinct as to be fairly termed a stench, nor was the supply of oxygen inadequate. But the room was filled with the warm, slightly musky smell of bodies still heated by bedclothes, bodies not dirty but not freshly washed. It was oppressive and unappetizing-in his present state almost nauseating.
He began to have some appreciation of the nature of his surroundings; he was in a bunkroom of some sort. It was crowded with men, men getting up, shuffling about, pulling on clothes. He lay on the bottom-most of a tier of four narrow bunks. Through the interstices between the legs which crowded around him and moved past his face he could see other such tiers around the walls and away from the walls, stacked floor to ceiling and supported by stanchions.
Someone sat down on the foot of Wingate’s bunk, crowding his broad fundamental against Wingate’s ankles while he drew on his socks. Wingate squirmed his feet away from the intrusion. The stranger turned his face toward him. ‘Did I crowd ‘ja, bud? Sorry.’ Then he added, not unkindly,
‘Better rustle out of there. The Master-at-Arms’ll be riding you to get them bunks up.’ He yawned hugely, and started to get up, quite evidently having dismissed Wingate and Wingate’s affairs from his mind.
‘Wait a minute!’ Wingate demanded hastily.
‘Huh?’
‘Where am I? In jail?’
The stranger studied Wingate’s bloodshot eyes and puffy, unwashed face with detached but un-malicious interest. ‘Boy, oh boy, you must ‘a’ done a good job of drinking up your bounty money.’
‘Bounty money? What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Honest to God, don’t you know where you are?’
‘No.’
‘Well … ‘ The other seemed reluctant to proclaim a truth made silly by its self-evidence until Wingate’s expression convinced him that he really wanted to know. ‘Well, you’re in the Evening Star, headed for Venus.’
A couple of minutes later the stranger touched him on the arm. ‘Don’t take it so hard, bud. There’s nothing to get excited about.’
Wingate took his hands from his face and pressed them against his temples. ‘It’s not real,’ he said, speaking more to himself than to the other. ‘It can’t be real -,
‘Stow it. Come and get your breakfast.’
‘I couldn’t eat anything.’
‘Nuts. Know how you feel … felt that way sometimes myself. Food is just the ticket.’ The Master-at-Arms settled the issue by coming up and prodding Wingate in the ribs with his truncheon.
‘What d’yuh think this is-sickbay, or first class? Get those bunks hooked up.’
‘Easy, mate, easy,’ Wingate’s new acquaintance conciliated, ‘our pal’s not himself this morning.’ As he spoke he dragged Wingate to his feet with one massive hand, then with the other shoved the tier of bunks up and against the wall. Hooks clicked into their sockets, and the tier stayed up, flat to the wall.
‘He’ll be a damn sight less himself if he interferes with my routine,’ the petty officer predicted. But he moved on. Wingate stood barefooted on the floorplates, immobile and overcome by a feeling of helpless indecision which was reinforced by the fact that he was dressed only in his underwear.
His champion studied him.
‘You forgot your pillow. Here-‘He reached down into the pocket formed by the lowest bunk and the wall and hauled out a flat package covered with transparent plastic. He broke the seal and shook out the contents, a single coverall garment of heavy denim. Wingate put it on gratefully. ‘You can get the squeezer to issue you a pair of slippers after breakfast,’ his friend added. ‘Right now we gotta eat.’
The last of the queue had left the galley window by the time they reached it and the window was closed. Wingate’s companion pounded on it. ‘Open up in there!’
It slammed open. ‘No seconds,’ a face announced.
The stranger prevented the descent of the window with his hand. ‘We don’t want seconds, shipmate, we want firsts.’
‘Why the devil can’t you show up on time?’ the galley functionary groused. But he slapped two ration cartons down on the broad sill of the issuing window. The big fellow handed one to Wingate, and sat down on the floor-plates, his back supported by the galley bulkhead.
‘What’s your name, bud?’ he enquired, as he skinned the cover off his ration. ‘Mine’s Hartley-“Satchel” Hartley.’
‘Mine is Humphrey Wingate.’
‘Okay, Hump. Pleased to meet ‘cha. Now what’s all this song and dance you been giving me?’ He spooned up an impossible bite of baked eggs and sucked coffee from the end of his carton.
‘Well,’ said Wingate, his face twisted with worry, ‘I guess I’ve been shanghaied.’ He tried to emulate Hartley’s method of drinking, and got the brown liquid over his face.
‘Here-that’s no way to do,’ Hartley said hastily. ‘Put the nipple in your mouth, then don’t squeeze any harder than you suck. Like this.’ He illustrated.
‘Your theory don’t seem very sound to me. The company don’t need crimps when there’s plenty of guys standing in line for a chance to sign up.
What happened? Can’t you remember?’
Wingate tried. ‘The last thing I recall,’ he said, ‘is arguing with a gyro driver over his fare.’
Hartley nodded. ‘They’ll gyp you every time. D’you think he put the slug on you?’
‘Well … no, I guess not. I seem to be all right, except for the damndest hangover you can imagine.’
‘You’ll feel better. You ought to be glad the Evening Star is a high-gravity ship instead of a trajectory job. Then you’d really be sick, and no foolin’.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I mean that she accelerates or decelerates her whole run. Has to, because she carries cabin passengers. If we had been sent by a freighter, it’d be a different story. They gun ‘em into the right trajectory, then go weightless for the rest of the trip. Man, how the new chums do suffer!’ He chuckled.
Wingate was in no condition to dwell on the hardships of space sickness. ‘What T can’t figure out,’ he said, ‘is how I landed here. Do you suppose they could have brought me aboard by mistake, thinking I was somebody else?’
‘Can’t say. Say, aren’t you going to finish your breakfast?’
‘I’ve had all I want.’ Hartley took his statement as an invitation and quickly finished off Wingate’s ration. Then he stood up, crumpled the two cartons into a ball, stuffed them down a disposal chute, and said,
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘What am I going to do about it?’ A look of decision came over Wingate’s face. ‘I’m going to march right straight up to the Captain and demand an explanation, that’s what I’m going to do!’
‘I’d take that by easy stages, Hump,’ Hartley commented doubtfully.
‘Easy stages, hell!’ He stood up quickly. ‘Ow! My head!’
The Master-at-Arms referred them to the Chief Master-at-Arms in order to get rid of them. Hartley waited with Wingate outside the stateroom of the
Chief Master-at-Arms to keep him company. ‘Better sell ‘em your bill of goods pretty pronto,’ he advised.
‘Why?’
‘We’ll ground on the Moon in a few hours. The stop to refuel at Luna City for deep space will be your last chance to get out, unless you want to walk back.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Wingate agreed delightedly. ‘I thought I’d have to make the round trip in any case.’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised but what you could pick up the Morning Star in a week or two. If it’s their mistake, they’ll have to return you.’
‘I can beat that,’ said Wingate eagerly. ‘I’ll go right straight to the bank at Luna City, have them arrange a letter of credit with my bank, and buy a ticket on the Earth-Moon shuttle.’
Hartley’s manner underwent a subtle change. He had never in his life ‘arranged a letter of credit’. Perhaps such a man could walk up to the Captain and lay down the law.
The Chief Master-at-Arms listened to Wingate’s story with obvious impatience, and interrupted him in the middle of it to consult his roster of emigrants. He thumbed through it to the Ws, and pointed to a line. Wingate read it with a sinking feeling. There was his own name, correctly spelled. ‘Now get out,’ ordered the official, ‘and quit wasting my time.’
But Wingate stood up to him. ‘You have no authority in this matter-none whatsoever. I insist that you take me to the Captain.’
‘Why, you-‘Wingate thought momentarily that the man was going to strike him. He interrupted.
‘Be careful what you do. You are apparently the victim of an honest mistake-but your legal position will be very shaky indeed, if you disregard the requirements of space-wise law under which this vessel is licensed. I don’t think your Captain would be pleased to have to explain such actions on your part in federal court.’
That he had gotten the man angry was evident. But a man does not get to be chief police officer of a major transport by jeopardizing his superior officers. His jaw muscles twitched but he pressed a button, saying nothing. A junior master-at-arms appeared. ‘Take this man to the Purser.’ He turned his back in dismissal and dialed a number on the ship’s intercommunication system.
Wingate was let in to see the Purser, ex-officio company business agent, after only a short wait. ‘What’s this all about?’ that officer demanded. ‘If you have a complaint, why can’t you present it at the morning hearings in the regular order?’
Wingate explained his predicament as clearly, convincingly, and persuasively as he knew how. ‘And so you see,’ he concluded, ‘I want to be put aground at Luna City. I’ve no desire to cause the company any embarrassment over what was undoubtedly an unintentional mishap-particularly as I am forced to admit that I had been celebrating rather freely and, perhaps, in some manner, contributed to the mistake.’
The Purser, who had listened noncommittally to his recital, made no answer. He shuffled through a high stack of file folders which rested on one corner of his deck, selected one, and opened it. It contained a sheaf of legal-size papers clipped together at the top. These he studied leisurely for several minutes, while Wingate stood waiting.
The Purser breathed with an asthmatic noisiness while he read, and, from time to time, drummed on his bared teeth with his fingernails.
Wingate had about decided, in his none too steady nervous condition, that if the man approached his hand to his mouth just once more that he, Wingate, would scream and start throwing things. At this point the Purser chucked the dossier across the desk toward Wingate. ‘Better have a look at these,’ he said.
Wingate did so. The main exhibit he found to be a contract, duly entered into, between Humphrey Wingate and the Venus Development Company for six years of indentured labor on the planet Venus.
‘That your signature?’ asked the Purser.
Wingate’s professional caution stood him in good stead. He studied the signature closely in order to gain time while he tried to collect his wits.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I will stipulate that it looks very much like my signature, but I will not concede that it is my signature-I’m not a handwriting expert.’ The Purser brushed aside the objection with an air of annoyance. ‘I haven’t time to quibble with you. Let’s check the thumbprint. Here.’ He shoved an impression pad across his desk. For a moment Wingate considered standing on his legal rights by refusing, but no, that would prejudice his case. He had nothing to lose; it couldn’t be his thumbprint on the contract. Unless-But it was. Even his untrained eye could see that the two prints matched. He fought back a surge of panic. This was probably a nightmare, inspired by his argument last night with Jones. Or, if by some wild chance it were real, it was a frame-up in which he must find the flaw. Men of his sort were not framed; the whole thing was ridiculous. He marshaled his words carefully.
‘I won’t dispute your position, my dear sir. In some fashion both you and I have been made the victims of a rather sorry joke. It seems hardly necessary to point out that a man who is unconscious, as I must have been last night, may have his thumbprint taken without his knowledge.
Superficially this contract is valid and I assume naturally your good faith in the matter. But, in fact, the instrument lacks one necessary element of a contract.’
‘Which is?’
‘The intention on the part of both parties to enter into a contractual relationship. Notwithstanding signature and thumbprint I had no intention of contracting which can easily be shown by other factors. I am a successful lawyer with a good practice, as my tax returns will show. It is not reasonable to believe-and no court will believe-that I voluntarily gave up my accustomed life for six years of indenture at a much lower income.’
‘So you’re a lawyer, eh? Perhaps there has been chicanery-on your part. How does it happen that you represent yourself here as a radio technician?’
Wingate again had to steady himself at this unexpected flank attack. He was in truth a radio expert-it was his cherished hobby-but how had they known? Shut up, he told himself. Don’t admit anything. ‘The whole thing is ridiculous,’ he protested. ‘I insist that 1 be taken to see the Captain-I can break that contract in ten minutes time.’
The Purser waited before replying. ‘Are you through speaking your piece?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. You’ve had your say, now I’ll have mine. You listen to me, Mister Spacelawyer. That contract was drawn up by some of the shrewdest legal minds in two planets. They had specifically in mind that worthless bums would sign it, drink up their bounty money, and then decide that they didn’t want to go to work after all. That contract has been subjected to every sort of attack possible and revised so that it can’t be broken by the devil himself.
‘You’re not peddling your curbstone law to another stumblebum in this case; you are talking to a man who knows just where he stands, legally. As for seeing the Captain-if you think the commanding officer of a major vessel has nothing more to do than listen to the rhira-dreams of a self-appointed word artist, you’ve got another think coming! Return to your quarters!’
Wingate started to speak, thought better of it, and turned to go. This would require some thought. The Purser stopped him. ‘Wait. Here’s your copy of the contract.’ He chucked it, the flimsy white sheets riffled to the deck. Wingate picked them up and left silently.
Hartley was waiting for him in the passageway. ‘How d’ja make out, Hump?’
‘Not so well. No, I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve got to think.’ They walked silently back the way they had come toward the ladder which gave access to the lower decks. A figure ascended from the ladder and, came toward them. Wingate noted it without interest.
He looked again. Suddenly the whole preposterous chain of events fell into place; he shouted in relief. ‘Sam!’ he called out. ‘Sam-you cockeyed old so-and-so. I should have spotted your handiwork.’ It was all clear now; Sam had framed him with a phony shanghai. Probably the skipper was a pal of Sam’s-a reserve officer, maybe-and they had cooked it up between them. It was a rough sort of a joke, but he was too relieved to be angry. Just the same he would make Jones pay for his fun, somehow, on the jump back from Luna City.
It was then that he noticed that Jones was not laughing.
Furthermore he was dressed-most unreasonably-in the same blue denim that the contract laborers were. ‘Hump,’ he was saying, ‘are you still drunk?’
‘Me? No. What’s the-‘
‘Don’t you realize we’re in a jam?’
‘Oh hell, Sam, a joke’s a joke, but don’t keep it up any longer. I’ve caught on, I tell you. I don’t mind-it was a good gag.’
‘Gag, eh?’ said Jones bitterly. ‘I suppose it was just a gag when you talked me into signing up.’
‘I persuaded you to sign up?’
‘You certainly did. You were so damn sure you knew what you were talking about. You claimed that we could sign up, spend a month or so, on
Venus, and come home. You wanted to bet on it. So we went around to the docks and signed up. It seemed like a good idea then-the only way to settle the argument.’
Wingate whistled softly. ‘Well, I’ll be-Sam, I haven’t the slightest recollection of it. I must have drawn a blank before I passed out.’
‘Yeah, I guess so. Too bad you didn’t pass out sooner. Not that I’m blaming you; you didn’t drag me. Anyhow, I’m on my way up to try to straighten it out.’
‘Better wait a minute till you hear what happened to me. Oh yes-Sam, this is, uh, Satchel Hartley. Good sort.’ Hartley had been waiting uncertainly near them; he stepped forward and shook hands.
Wingate brought Jones up to date, and added, ‘So you see your reception isn’t likely to be too friendly. I guess I muffed it. But we are sure to break the contract as soon as we can get a hearing on time alone.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘We were signed up less than twelve hours before ship lifting. That’s contrary to the Space Precautionary Act.’
‘Yes-yes, I see what you mean. The Moon’s in her last quarter; they would lift ship some time after midnight to take advantage of favorable earth-swing. I wonder what time it was when we signed on?’
Wingate took out his contract copy. The notary’s stamp showed a time of eleven thirty-two. ‘Great Day!’ he shouted. ‘I knew there would be a flaw in it somewhere. This contract is invalid on its face. The ship’s log will prove it.’
Jones studied it. ‘Look again,’ he said. Wingate did so. The stamp showed eleven thirty-two, but A.M., not P.M.
‘But that’s impossible,’ he protested.
‘Of course it is. But it’s official. I think we will find that the story is that we were signed on in the morning, paid our bounty money, and had one last glorious luau before we were carried aboard. I seem to recollect some trouble in getting the recruiter to sign us up. Maybe we convinced, him by kicking in our bounty money.’
‘But we didn’t sign up in the morning. It’s not true and I can prove it.’
‘Sure you can prove it-but how can you prove it without going back to Earth first!’
‘So you see it’s this way,’ Jones decided after some minutes of somewhat fruitless discussion, ‘there is no sense in trying to break our contracts here and now; they’ll laugh at us. The thing to do is to make money talk, and talk loud. The only way I can see to get us off at Luna City is to post non-performance bonds with the company bank there-cash, and damn big ones too.’
‘How big?’
‘Twenty thousand credits, at least, I should guess.’
‘But that’s not equitable-it’s all out of proportion.’
‘Quit worrying about equity, will you? Can’t you realize that they’ve got us where the hair is short? This won’t be a bond set by a court ruling; it’s got to be big enough to make a minor company official take a chance on doing something that’s not in the book.’
‘I can’t raise such a bond.’
‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.’
Wingate wanted to argue the point, but did not. There are times when it is very convenient to have a wealthy friend.
‘I’ve got to get a radiogram off to my sister,’ Jones went on, ‘to get this done -,
‘Why your sister? Why not your family firm?’
‘Because we need fast action, that’s why. The lawyers that handle our family finances would fiddle and fume around trying to confirm the message.
They’d send a message back to the Captain, asking if Sam Houston Jones were really aboard, and he would answer “No”, as I’m signed up as
Sam Jones. I had some silly idea of staying out of the news broadcasts, on account of the family.’
‘You can’t blame them,’ protested Wingate, feeling an obscure clannish loyalty to his colleague in law, ‘they’re handling other people’s money.’
‘I’m not blaming them. But I’ve got to have fast action and Sis’ll do what I ask her. I’ll phrase the message so she’ll know it’s me. The only hurdle now is to persuade the Purser to let me send a message on tick.’
He was gone for a long time on this mission. Hartley waited with Wingate, both to keep him company and because of a strong human interest in unusual events. When Jones finally appeared he wore a look of tight-lipped annoyance. Wingate, seeing the expression, felt a sudden, chilling apprehension. ‘Couldn’t you send it? Wouldn’t he let you?’
‘Oh, he let me-finally,’ Jones admitted, ‘but that Purser-man, is he tight!’
Even without the alarm gongs Wingate would have been acutely aware of the grounding at Luna City. The sudden change from the high gravity deceleration of their approach to the weak surface gravity-one-sixth earth normal-of the Moon took immediate toll on his abused stomach. It was well that he had not eaten much. Both Hartley and Jones were deep-space men and regarded enough acceleration to permit normal swallowing as adequate for any purpose. There is a curious lack of sympathy between those who are subject to space sickness and those who are immune to it.
Why the spectacle of a man regurgitating, choked, eyes streaming with tears, stomach knotted with pain, should seem funny is difficult to see, but there it is. It divides the human race into two distinct and antipathetic groups-amused contempt on one side, helpless murderous hatred on the other.
Neither Hartley nor Jones had the inherent sadism which is too frequently evident on such occasions-for example the great wit who suggests salt pork as a remedy-but, feeling no discomfort themselves, they were simply unable to comprehend (having forgotten the soul-twisting intensity of their own experience as new chums) that Wingate was literally suffering ‘a fate worse than death’-much worse, for it was stretched into a sensible eternity by a distortion of the time sense known only to sufferers from space sickness, seasickness, and (we are told) smokers of hashish.
As a matter of fact, the stop on the Moon was less than four hours long. Toward the end of the wait Wingate had quieted down sufficiently again to take an interest in the expected reply to Jones’ message, particularly after Jones had assured him that he would be able to spend the expected layover under bond at Luna City in a hotel equipped with a centrifuge.
But the answer was delayed. Jones had expected to hear from his sister within an hour, perhaps before the Evening Star grounded at the Luna City docks. As the hours stretched out he managed to make himself very unpopular at the radio room by his repeated inquiries. An over-worked clerk had sent him brusquely about his business for the seventeenth time when he heard the alarm sound preparatory to raising ship; he went back and admitted to Wingate that his scheme had apparently failed.
‘Of course, we’ve got ten minutes yet,’ he finished unhopefully, ‘if the message should arrive before they raise ship, the Captain could still put us aground at the last minute. We’ll go back and haunt ‘em some more right up to the last. But it looks like a thin chance.’
‘Ten minutes-‘said Wingate, ‘couldn’t we manage somehow to slip outside and run for it?’
Jones looked exasperated. ‘Have you ever tried running in a total vacuum?’
Wingate had very little time in which to fret on the passage from Luna City to Venus. He learned a great deal about the care and cleaning of washrooms, and spent ten hours a day perfecting his new skill. Masters-at-Arms have long memories.
The Evening Star passed beyond the limits of ship-to-Terra radio communication shortly after leaving Luna City; there was nothing to do but wait until arrival at Adonis, port of the north polar colony. The company radio there was strong enough to remain in communication at all times except for the sixty days bracketing superior conjunction and a shorter period of solar interference at inferior conjunction. ‘They will probably be waiting for us with a release order when we ground,’ Jones assured Wingate, ‘and we’ll go back on the return trip of the Evening Star-first class, this time. Or, at the very Worst, we’ll have to wait over for the Morning Star. That wouldn’t be so bad, once I get some credit transferred; we could spend it at Venusburg.’
‘I suppose you went there on your cruise,’ Wingate said, curiosity showing in his voice. He was no Sybarite, but the lurid reputation of the most infamous, or famous-depending on one’s evaluations-pleasure city of three planets was enough to stir the imagination of the least hedonistic.
‘No-worse luck!’ Jones denied. ‘I was on a hull inspection board the whole time. Some of my messmates went, though boy!’ He whistled softly and shook his head.
But there was no one awaiting their arrival, nor was there any message. Again they stood around the communication office until told sharply and officially to get on back to their quarters and stand by to disembark, ‘- and be quick about it!’
‘I’ll see you in the receiving barracks, Hump,’ were Jones’ last words before he hurried off to his own compartment.

The Master-at-Arms responsible for the compartment in which Hartley and Wingate were billeted lined his charges up in a rough column of two’s and, when ordered to do so by the metallic bray of the ship’s loudspeaker, conducted them through the central passageway and down four decks to the lower passenger port. It stood open; they shuffled through the lock and out of the ship-not into the free air of Venus, but into a sheet metal tunnel which joined it, after some fifty yards, to a building.
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 earthnormal, 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 un-reluctantly, 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 special 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 anyone 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 harness like 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 night 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 liberals?’
‘No.’
‘Well, the natives ain’t liberals 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 suddenly.
‘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. ‘Twentyone 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 loses 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, air 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.
Presently the conversation lagged and one of the ranch hands started to sing. He had a passable tenor voice and was soon joined by others.
Wingate found himself singing the choruses as fast as he learned them. They sang Pay Book and Since the Pusher Met My Cousin and a mournful thing called They Found Him in the Bush. But this was followed by a light number, The Night the Rain Stopped, which seemed to have an endless string of verses recounting various unlikely happenings which occurred on that occasion. (‘The Squeezer bought a round-a-drinks -‘)
Jimmie drew applause and enthusiastic support in the choruses with a ditty entitled That Redheaded Venusburg Gal, but Wingate considered it inexcusably vulgar. He did not have time to dwell on the matter; it was followed by a song which drove it out of his mind.
The tenor started it, slowly and softly. The others sang the refrains while he rested-all but Wingate; he was silent and thoughtful throughout. In the triplet of the second verse the tenor dropped out and the others sang in his place.
‘Oh, you stamp your paper and you sign your name, (‘Come away! Come away!)
‘They pay your bounty and you drown your shame.
(‘Rue the day! Rue the day!)
‘They land you down at Ellis Isle and put you in a pen;
‘There you see what happens to the Six-Year men-‘They haven’t paid their bounty and they sign ‘em up again!
(‘Here to stay! Here to stay!)
‘But me I’ll save my bounty and a ticket on the ship, (‘So you say! So you say!)
‘And then you’ll see me leavin’ on the very next trip. (‘Come the day! Come the day!)
‘Oh, we’ve heard that kinda story just a thousand times and one.
‘Now we wouldn’t say you’re lyin’ but we’d like to see it done.
‘We’ll see you next at Venusburg apayin’ for your fun! And you’ll never meet your bounty on this hitch!
(‘Come away!’)
It left Wingate with a feeling of depression not entirely accounted for by the tepid drizzle, the unappetizing landscape, nor by the blanket of pale mist which is the invariable Venerian substitute for the open sky. He withdrew to one corner of the hold and kept to himself, until, much later, Jimmie shouted, ‘Lights ahead!’
Wingate leaned out and peered eagerly towards his new home.
Four weeks and no word from Sam Houston Jones. Venus had turned once on its axis, the fortnight long Venerian ‘winter’ had given way to an equally short ‘summer’-indistinguishable from ‘winter’ except that the rain was a trifle heavier and a little hotter-and now it was ‘winter’ again. Van
Huysen’s ranch, being near the pole, was, like most of the tenable area of Venus, never in darkness. The miles-thick, ever present layer of clouds tempered the light of the low-hanging sun during the long day, and, equally, held the heat and diffused the light from a sun just below the horizon to produce a continuing twilight during the two-week periods which were officially ‘night’, or ‘winter’.
Four weeks and no word. Four weeks and no sun, no moon, no stars, no dawn. No clean crisp breath of morning air, no life-quickening beat of
noonday sun, no welcome evening shadows, nothing, nothing at all to distinguish one sultry, sticky hour from the next but the treadmill routine of sleep and work and food and sleep again-nothing but the gathering ache in his heart for the cool blue skies of Terra.
He had acceded to the invariable custom that new men should provide a celebration for the other clients and had signed the Squeezer’s chits to obtain happywater-rhira-for the purpose-to discover, when first he signed the pay book, that his gesture of fellowship had cost him another four months of delay before he could legally quit his ‘job’. Thereupon he had resolved never again to sign a chit, had foresworn the prospect of brief holidays at Venusburg, had promised himself to save every possible credit against his bounty and transportation liens.
Whereupon he discovered that the mild alcoholoid drink was neither a vice nor a luxury, but a necessity, as necessary to human life on Venus as the ultraviolet factor present in all colonial illuminating systems. it produces, not drunkenness, but lightness of heart, freedom from worry, and without it he could not get to sleep. Three nights of self-recrimination and fretting, three days of fatigue-drugged uselessness under the unfriendly eye of the
Pusher, and he had signed for his bottle with the rest, even though dully aware that the price of the bottle had washed out more than half of the day’s microscopic progress toward freedom.
Nor had he been assigned to radio operation. Van Huysen had an operator. Wingate, although listed on the books as standby operator, went to the swamps with the rest.
He discovered on rereading his contract a clause which permitted his patron to do this, and he admitted with half his mind the detached judicial and legalistic half-that the clause was reasonable and proper, not inequitable.
He went to the swamps. He learned to wheedle and bully the little, mild amphibian people into harvesting the bulbous underwater growth of
Hyacinthus veneris johnsoni-Venus swamproot-and to bribe the co-operation of their matriarchs with promises of bonuses in the form of ‘thigarek’, a term which meant not only cigarette, but tobacco in any form, the staple medium in trade when dealing with the natives.
He took his turn in the chopping sheds and learned, clumsily and slowly, to cut and strip the spongy outer husk from the pea-sized kernel which alone had commercial value and which must be removed intact, without scratch or bruise. The juice from the pods made his hands raw and the odor made him cough and stung his eyes, but he enjoyed it more than the work in the marshes, for it threw him into the company of the female labor clients. Women were quicker at the work than men and their smaller fingers more dextrous in removing the valuable, easily damaged capsule. Men were used for such work only when accumulated crops required extra help.
He learned his new trade from a motherly old person whom the other women addressed as Hazel. She talked as she worked, her gnarled old hands moving steadily and without apparent direction or skill. He could close his eyes and imagine that he was back on Earth and a boy again, hanging around his grandmother’s kitchen while she shelled peas and rambled on. ‘Don’t you fret yourself, boy,’ Hazel told him. ‘Do your work and shame the devil. There’s a great day coming.’
‘What kind of great day, Hazel?’
‘The day when the Angels of the Lord will rise up and smite the powers of evil. The day when the Prince of Darkness will be cast down into the pit and the Prophet shall reign over the children of Heaven. So don’t you worry; it doesn’t matter whether you are here or back home when the great day comes; the only thing that matters is your state of grace.’
‘Are you sure we will live long enough to see the day?’
She glanced around, then leaned over confidentially. ‘The day is almost upon us. Even now the Prophet moves up and down the land gathering his forces. Out of the clean farm country of the Mississippi Valley there comes the Man, known in this world’-she lowered her voice still more-‘as
Nehemiah Scudder!’
Wingate hoped that his start of surprise and amusement did not show externally. He recalled the name. It was that of a pipsqueak, backwoods evangelist, an unimportant nuisance back on Earth, but the butt of an occasional guying news story, but a man of no possible consequence.
The chopping shed Pusher moved up to their bench. ‘Keep your eyes on your work, you! You’re way behind now.’ Wingate hastened to comply, but
Hazel came to his aid.
‘You leave him be, Joe Tompson. It takes time to learn chopping.’
‘Okay, Mom,’ answered the Pusher with a grin, ‘but keep him pluggin’. See?’
‘I will. You worry about the rest of the shed. This bench’ll have its quota.’ Wingate had been docked two days running for spoilage. Hazel was lending him poundage now and the Pusher knew it, but everybody liked her, even pushers, who are reputed to like no one, not even themselves.
Wingate stood just outside the gate of the bachelors’ compound. There was yet fifteen minutes before lock-up roll call; he had walked out in a subconscious attempt to rid himself of the pervading feeling of claustrophobia which he had had throughout his stay. The attempt was futile; there was no ‘out-doorness’ about the outdoors on Venus, the bush crowded the clearing in on itself, the leaden misty sky pressed down on his head, and the steamy heat sat on his bare chest. Still, it was better than the bunkroom in spite of the dehydrators.
He had not yet obtained his evening ration of rhira and felt, consequently, nervous and despondent, yet residual self-respect caused him to cherish a few minutes clear thinking before he gave in to cheerful soporific. It’s getting me, he thought, in a few more months I’ll be taking every chance to get to Venusburg, or worse yet, signing a chit for married quarters and condemning myself and my kids to a life-sentence. When he first arrived the women clients, with their uniformly dull minds and usually commonplace faces, had seemed entirely unattractive. Now, he realized with dismay, he was no longer so fussy. Why, he was even beginning to lisp, as the other clients did, in unconscious imitation of the amphibians.
Early, he had observed that the clients could be divided roughly into two categories, the child of nature and the broken men. The first were those of little imagination and simple standards. In all probability they had known nothing better back on Earth; they saw in the colonial culture, not slavery, but freedom from responsibility, security, and an occasional spree. The others were the broken men, the outcasts, they who had once been somebody, but, through some defect of character, or some accident, had lost their places in society. Perhaps the judge had said, ‘Sentence suspended if you ship for the colonies.’
He realized with sudden panic that his own status was crystallizing; he was becoming one of the broken men. His background on Earth was becoming dim in his mind; he had put off for the last three days the labor of writing another letter to Jones; he had spent all the last shift rationalizing the necessity for taking a couple of days holiday at Venusburg. Face it, son, face it, he told himself. You’re slipping, you’re letting your mind relax into slave psychology. You’ve unloaded the problem of getting out of this mess onto Jones - how do you know he can help you? For all you know he may be dead. Out of the dimness of his memory he recaptured a phrase which he had read somewhere, some philosopher of history: ‘No slave is ever freed, save he free himself.’
All right, all right-pull up your socks, old son. Take a brace. No more rhira-no, that wasn’t practical; a man had to have sleep. Very well, then, no rhira until lights-out, keep your mind clear in the evenings and plan. Keep your eyes open, find out all you can, cultivate friendships, and watch for a chance.
Through the gloom he saw a human figure approaching the gate of the compound. As it approached he saw that it was a woman and supposed it to be one of the female clients. She came closer, he saw that he was mistaken. It was Annek van Huysen, daughter of the patron.
She was a husky, overgrown blond girl with unhappy eyes. He had seen her many times, watching the clients as they returned from their labor, or wandering alone around the ranch clearing.
She was neither unsightly, nor in anywise attractive; her heavy adolescent figure needed more to flatter it than the harness which all colonists wore as the maximum tolerable garment.
She stopped before him, and, unzipping the pouch at her waist which served in lieu of pockets, took out a package of cigarettes. ‘I found this back there. Did you lose it?’
He knew that she lied; she had picked up nothing since she had come into sight. And the brand was one smoked on Earth and by patrons; no client could afford such. What was she up to?
He noted the eagerness in her face and the rapidity of her breathing, and realized, with confusion, that this girl was trying indirectly to make him a present. Why?
Wingate was not particularly conceited about his own physical beauty, or charm, nor had he any reason to be. But what he had not realized was that among the common run of the clients he stood out like a cock pheasant in a barnyard. But that Annek found him pleasing he was forced to admit; there could be no other explanation for her trumped-up story and her pathetic little present.
His first impulse was to snub her. He wanted nothing of her and resented the invasion of his privacy, and he was vaguely aware that the situation could be awkward, even dangerous to him, involving, as it did, violations of custom which jeopardized the whole social and economic structure.
From the viewpoint of the patrons, labor clients were almost as much beyond the pale as the amphibians. A liaison between a labor client and one of the womenfolk of the patrons could easily wake up old Judge Lynch.
But he had not the heart to be brusque with her. He could see the dumb adoration in her eyes; it would have required cold, heartlessness to have repulsed her. Besides, there was nothing coy or provocative in her attitude; her manner was naive, almost childlike in its unsophistication. He recalled his determination to make friends; here was friendship offered, a dangerous friendship, but one which might prove useful in Winning free.
He felt a momentary wave of shame that he should be weighing the potential usefulness of this defenseless child, but he suppressed it by affirming to himself that he would do her no harm, and, anyhow, there was the old saw about the vindictiveness of a woman scorned.
‘Why, perhaps I did lose it,’ he evaded, then added, ‘It’s my favorite brand.’
‘Is it?’ she said happily. ‘Then do take it, in any case.’
‘Thank you. Will you smoke one with me? No, I guess that wouldn’t do; your father would not want you to stay here that long.’
‘Oh, he’s busy with his accounts. I saw that before I came out,’ she answered, and seemed unaware that she had given away her pitiful little deception. ‘But go ahead, I-I hardly ever smoke.’
‘Perhaps you prefer a meerschaum pipe, like your father.’
She laughed more than the poor witticism deserved. After that they talked aimlessly, both agreeing that the crop was coming in nicely, that the weather seemed a little cooler than last week, and that there was nothing like a little fresh air after supper.
‘Do you ever walk for exercise after supper?’ she asked.
He did not say that a long day in the swamps offered more than enough exercise, but agreed that he did.
‘So do I,’ she blurted out. ‘Lots of times up near the water tower.’
He looked at her. ‘Is that so? I’ll remember that.’ The signal for roll call gave him a welcome excuse to get away; three more minutes, he thought, and I would have had to make a date with her.
Wingate found himself called for swamp work the next day, the rush in the chopping sheds having abated. The crock lumbered and splashed its way around the long, meandering circuit, leaving one or more Earthmen at each supervision station. The car was down to four occupants, Wingate,
Satchel, the Pusher, and Jimmie the Crocker, when the Pusher signaled for another stop. The flat, bright-eyed heads of amphibian natives broke water on three sides as soon as they were halted. ‘All right, Satchel,’ ordered the Pusher, ‘this is your billet. Over the side.’
Satchel looked around. ‘Where’s my skiff?’ The ranchers used small flat-bottomed duralumin skiffs in which to collect their day’s harvest. There was not one left in the crock.
‘You won’t need one. You goin’ to clean this field for planting.’
‘That’s okay. Still-I don’t see nobody around, and I don’t see no solid ground.’ The skiffs had a double purpose; if a man were working out of contact with other Earthmen and at some distance from safe dry ground, the skiff became his life boat. If the crocodile which was supposed to collect him broke down, or if for any other reason he had need to sit down or lie down while on station, the skiff gave him a place to do so. The older clients told grim stories of men who had stood in eighteen inches of water for twenty-four, forty-eight, seventy-two hours, and then drowned horribly, out of their heads from sheer fatigue.
‘There’s dry ground right over there.’ The Pusher waved his hand in the general direction of a clump of trees which lay perhaps a quarter of a mile away.
‘Maybe so,’ answered Satchel equably. ‘Let’s go see.’ He grinned at Jimmie, who turned to the Pusher for instructions.
‘Damnation