Always a Qurono, Jim Harmon [popular e readers .TXT] 📗

By JIM HARMON

Illustrated by RITTER

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine August 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

You too can be a Qurono. All you need do is
geoplanct. All you need know is when to stop!

Barnhart sauntered right into the middle of them. He covertly watched the crew close in around him and he never twitched an eyelash. Officers must never panic, he reminded himself, and manipulated the morning sighting on the nearest sun through the Fitzgerald lens. It was exactly 900:25:30, Galactic Time.

He jotted the reading in, satisfied. The warm breath tickling the back of his neck was unnerving. If he showed fear and grabbed a blaster from the locker he could probably control them, but he was devastingly aware that a captain must never show fear.

"Captain Barnhart," Simmons, the mate, drawled politely, "do you still plan on making the jump at 900 thirty?"

The captain removed his eyeglasses and polished the lenses.

"Simmons," he said in comforting, confiding tones, "you are well aware that regulations clearly state that a spaceship that phases in on a star in major trans-spot activity is required to re-phase within twenty-four hours to avoid being caught in turbulence."

"Yes, sir," Simmons said. "But, as I have stated before, it is my belief that regulation means that a ship should phase to avoid the possibility of being caught in an energy storm. We landed right in the middle of one. As you are aware, sir, if we phase now there is an excellent chance we will warp right into the sun!"

Barnhart shook his lean, bronze head wearily. "Simmons, the Admiralty has gone through this thousands of times. Obviously they know our danger is greater by staying where we are. Why, Ignatz 6Y out there may nova! We'll have to take our chances."

"No, sir." Simmons thrust his pale, blue-veined jaw at him, his light eyes Nordicly cold below a blond cropping. "The storm spots are dying down. We aren't phasing yet."

Barnhart drew himself up and looked down at the mate. Behind Simmons, York moved closer. The captain was suddenly aware of York's low forehead and muscular, free-swinging arms. It was probably sheer bias, but he had frequently entertained the idea that Englishmen were closer to our apelike ancestor than most people ... the way they ran around painted blue when everybody was civilly wearing clothes and all. Obviously York was incapable of thinking for himself and was willing to do anything Simmons commanded him to do.

It became transparent to Barnhart that they were going to mutiny to avoid following their duty as clearly outlined in regulations. Judging from York's twitching knuckles, they were going to resist by strangling him.

Barnhart wondered if this was the time to show fear and unlock a weapon to defend himself.

York clamped onto him before he could decide on the proper interpretation of the regulations and just as his mind settled on the irresolvable question: If a captain must never show fear, why was he given the key to a hand weapons locker to use when in fear of his life?

Barnhart gazed around the purple clearing with clouded eyes. He trembled in near traumatic shock. It was almost too much to bear.

Regulations clearly stated that no officer was to be marooned on a .9 Earth-type planet at fourteen-forty Galactic Time, early evening local.

Or (he brushed at his forehead) he was damned certain they at least strongly implied it.

But fear was such a foreign element to his daily routine he discarded it.

The scene took him back to his boyhood.

He sorted out the survival supplies, lifting even the portable nuclear generator effortlessly under the .67 gravity, and remembered how he used to go camping regularly every month when he was a Boy Scout. He had been a bookish child, too obsessed with reading, they told him. So he had put himself on a regular schedule for play. Still, it never seemed to make people like him much better. After he established his routine he didn't try to change it—he probably couldn't make things better and he certainly couldn't stand them any worse.

Barnhart paused in his labors and stripped off his soaked uniform shirt, deciding to break out his fatigues. As the wet sleeve turned wrong side out he noticed his wristwatch showed fifteen hundred hours.

As usual he fetched his toothbrush from the personals kit and started to scrub his teeth.

This was when he saw his first qurono in the act of geoplancting.

It was a deeply disturbing experience.

Barnhart and the lank, slick-bodied alien ignored each other every morning while the marooned captain had his coffee and the native chronoped; each afternoon while Barnhart laid down for a nap and the other xenogutted; and of course before retiring while Barnhart brushed his teeth and the alien did his regular stint of geoplancting.

The captain sat about arranging living quarters on the planet. The crew of the Quincey had provided him with every necessity except communications gear. Still he was confident he would find a way back and see that Simmons and the rest got the punishment clearly called for in Regulation C-79, Clause II.

This driving need to have the regulation obeyed was as close as he could get to anger.

His lot was a rough and primitive one, but he sat down to doing the best with things that he could. Using the nuclear reactor, he synthesized a crude seven-room cottage. He employed an unorthodox three-story architecture. This gave him a kind of observation tower from which he could watch to see if the natives started to get restless. Traditionally, this would be a bad sign.

Humming to himself, he was idly adding some rococo work around the front door when thirteen-hundred-thirty came up and he stopped for his nap. At the edge of the now somewhat larger clearing the alien was xenogutting in the indigo shadows of a drooping bush-tree. Since he hadn't furnished the house yet, Barnhart stretched out on the grass. Suddenly he sat upright and shot a glance at the alien. Could this sort of thing be regarded as restless activity?

He was safe so long as the aliens maintained their regular routine but if they started to deviate from it he was in trouble.

He tossed around on the velvet blades for some minutes.

He got to his feet.

The nap would have to be by-passed. As much as he resented the intrusion on his regular routine he would have to find some other natives. He had to know if all the aliens on the planet xenogutted each afternoon as he was having his nap.

The thought crossed his mind that he might not wake up some afternoon if his presence was causing the aliens to deviate dangerously from their norm.

The most unnerving thing about the village was that there were exactly ten houses and precisely one hundred inhabitants. Each house was 33.3 feet on a side. The surfaces were hand-hewn planking or flat-sided logs. There were four openings: each opposing two were alternately one foot and an alarming ten feet high. Barnhart couldn't see the roof. The buildings appeared square, so he supposed the houses were 33.3 feet tall.

At the end of the single packed, violet-earthed street facing up the road was a large sign of some unidentifiable metal bearing the legend in standard Galactic:

THIS IS A VILLAGE OF QURONOS

Barnhart received the information unenthusiastically. He had never before encountered the term. The sign might as well have told him the place was a town of jabberwockies.

The single scarlet sun with its corona of spectrum frost was drawing low on the forest-covered horizon. Barnhart, dry of mouth and sore of foot, had not encountered yet a single one of the hundred inhabitants. He had missed his nap and his dinner, and now (he ran his tongue over his thick-feeling teeth) he was about to miss his nightly brushing of his teeth. He had taken only a minimum survival kit with him—which did not include a smaller personals kit.

His wristwatch, still on good, reliable ship's time, recorded nearly fifteen hundred hours straight up. His body chemistry was still operating on the Captain's Shift, whereby he spent part of the time with both the day and night shifts. It was nearly time for him to go to bed. Fortunately it was almost night on the planet.

He was searching out his portable force field projector from some loose coins and keys when the one hundred quronos came out of their houses and began geoplancting.