The Sentimentalists, Murray Leinster [i am reading a book txt] 📗

He began to regain some of his old arrogantly bored manner. Now that the Company's guiding hand was once more with him, nothing seemed as bad as it had been. He was able to report that something had happened to save the colony from extinction, and that Lon Simpson had probably done it.

In return, he got a spacegram demanding full particulars, and precise information on the devices he had reported Lon Simpson to have made.

Humbly, Carson obeyed his corporation.

He pumped Cathy—which was not difficult, because she was bursting with pride in Lon. She confirmed, in detail, the rumor that Lon was somehow responsible for the protective screen that was keeping everybody alive.

Carson sent the information by spacegram. He was informed that a special Company ship was heading for Cetis Gamma Two at full speed. Carson would take orders from its skipper when it arrived. Meanwhile, he would buy thanar leaf if absolutely necessary, but stall as long as possible. The legal staff of the Trading Company was working on the problem of adapting the system to get the new surplus supplies of thanar without letting anybody get anything in particular for it. He would keep secret the coming of the special ship, which was actually the space yacht of a member of the Board of Directors. And he would display great friendliness toward Lon Simpson.

The last was the difficult part, because Lon Simpson was becoming difficult. With the sun writhing as if in agony overhead—seen dimly through a permanent blessed mistiness—and changing shape from hour to hour, Lon Simpson had discovered something new to get mad about. Lon had felt definitely on top of the world. He had solved the problem of clearing his debts and getting credit sufficient for two passages back to Earth, with money there to take care of getting rich on his inventions. There was no reason to delay marriage. He wanted to get married. And through a deplorable oversight, there had been no method devised by which a legal marriage ceremony could be performed on Cetis Gamma Two.

It was one of those accidental omissions which would presently be rectified. But the legal minds who'd set up the system for the planet had been thinking of money, not marriages. They hadn't envisioned connubial bliss as a service the Company should provide. And Lon was raising cain. His barn was literally bursting with thanar leaves, and he was filling up his attic, extra bedroom, living quarters and kitchen with more. He was rich. He wanted to get married. And it wasn't possible.

Lon was in a position to raise much more cain than ordinary. He'd made an amicable bargain with his fellow colonists. They brought truckloads of miscellaneous foliage to be put into his vegetation converter, and he converted it all into thanar leaves. The product was split two ways. Everybody was happy—except Carson—Because every colonist had already acquired enough thanar leaf to pay himself out of debt, and was working on extra capital.

If this kept up, the galactic market would be broken.

Carson had nightmares about that.

So the sun went through convulsions in emptiness, and nobody on its second planet paid any attention at all. After about a week, it occasionally subsided. When that happened, the ionization of the planet's upper atmosphere lessened, the radiation screen grew thinner, and a larger proportion of light reached the surface. When the sun flared higher, the shield automatically grew thicker. An astronomical phenomenon which should have destroyed all life on the inner planets came to be taken for granted.

But events on the second planet were not without consequences elsewhere. The Board of Directors of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company simultaneously jittered and beamed with anticipation. If Lon could convert one form of vegetable product into another, then the Company's monopoly of thanar would vanish as soon as he got loose with his device. On the other hand, if the Company could get that device for its very own....

Thanar had a practically unlimited market. Every year a new age group of the population needed a milligram a day to keep old age away. But besides that, there was Martian zuss fiber, which couldn't be marketed because there wasn't enough of it, but would easily fetch a thousand credits a kilo if Lon's gadget could produce it from samples. There was that Arcturian sicces dust—the pollen of an inordinately rare plant on Arcturus Four—which could be sold at more than its weight in diamonds, for perfume. And—

The directors of the Company shivered over what might happen; and gloated over what could. So they kept their fingers crossed while the space yacht of one of their number sped toward Cetis Gamma Two, manned by very trustworthy men who would carry out their instructions with care and vigor and no nonsense about it.

Lon Simpson worked with his neighbors, converting all sorts of vegetable debris—the fact that some of it was scorched did not seem to matter—into thanar leaf which was sound legal tender on that particular planet. From time to time he went to Cetopolis. He talked sentimentally and yearningly to Cathy. And then he went to Carson's office and raised the very devil because there was as yet no arrangement by which he and Cathy could enter into the state of holy matrimony.

Rhadampsicus looked over his notes and was very well pleased. He explained to Nodalictha that from now on the return of Cetis Gamma to its normal condition would be a cut-and-dried affair. He would like to stay and watch it, but the important phenomena were all over now. He said solicitously that if she wanted to go on, completing their nuptial journey.... She might be anxious to see her family and friends.... She might be lonely....

Nodalictha smiled at him. The process would have been horrifying to a human who watched, but Rhadampsicus smiled back.

"Lonely?" asked Nodalictha coyly. "With you, Rhadampsicus?"

He impulsively twined his eye stalks about hers. A little later he was saying tenderly, "Then I'll just finish my observations, darling, and we'll go on—since you don't mind waiting."

"I'd like to see my pets again," said Nodalictha, nestling comfortably against him.

Together, they scanned the second planet, but their thoughts could not penetrate its Rhinthak screen. They saw the space yacht flash up to it. Rhadampsicus inspected the minds of the bipeds inside it. Nodalictha, of course, modestly refrained from entering the minds of male creatures other than her husband.

"Peculiar," commented Rhadampsicus. "Very peculiar. If I were a sociologist, I might find it less baffling. But they must have a very queer sort of social system. They actually intend to harm your pets, Nodalictha, because the male now knows how to supply them all with food and energy! Isn't that strange? I wish the Rhinthak screen did not block off scanning.... But it will fade, presently."

"You will keep the others from harming my pets," said Nodalictha confidently. "Do you know, darling, I think I must be quite the luckiest person in the Galaxy, to be married to you."

The space yacht landed at the field outside Cetopolis. Inhabitants of the tiny town flocked to the field to see new faces. They were disappointed. One man came out and the airlock closed. No visitors.

The skipper went into Carson's office. He closed the door firmly behind him. He had very beady eyes and a very hard-boiled expression. He looked at Carson with open contempt, and Carson felt that it was because Carson did the Company's dirty work with figures and due regard for law and order, instead of frankly and violently and without shilly-shallying.

"This Lon Simpson's got those gadgets, eh?" asked the skipper.

"Why—yes," said Carson unhappily. "He's very popular at the moment. He made something on his barn roof that kept the sun from burning us all to death, you know—that still keeps us from burning to death, for that matter."

"So if we take it away or smash it," observed the skipper, "we don't have to worry about anybody saying nasty things about us afterward. Yeah?"

Carson swallowed.

"Everybody'd die if you smashed the gadget," he admitted, "but all the thanar plants in existence would be burned up, too. There'd be no more thanar. The Company wouldn't like that."

The skipper waved his hand. "How do I get this Simpson on my ship? Take a bunch of my men and go grab him?"

"Wh-what are you going to do with him?"

"Don't you worry," said the skipper comfortingly. "We know how to handle it. He knows how to make some things the bosses want to know how to make. Once I get him on the ship, he'll tell. We got ways. Do I take some men and grab him, or will you get him on board peaceable?"

"There—ah—" Carson licked his lips. "He wants to get married. There's no provision in the legal code for it, as yet. It was overlooked. But I can tell him that as a ship captain, you—"

The skipper nodded matter of factly.

"Right. You get him and the girl on board. And I've got some orders for you. Gather up plenty of thanar seed. Get some starting trays with young plants in them. I'll come back in a couple of days and take you and them on board. The stuff this guy has got is too good, understand?"

"N-no. I'm afraid I don't."

"I get this guy to tell us how to make his gadgets," the skipper explained contemptuously. "We make sure he tells us right. To be extra sure, we leave the gadgets he's got made and working back here, where he can't get to 'em and spoil 'em. But when we know all he knows—and what he only guesses, too, and my tame scientists have made the same kinda gadgets, an' they work—why, we come back and pick you up, and the thanar seed and the young growing plants. Then we get the gadgets this guy made here, and we head back for Earth."

"But if you take the gadget that keeps us all from being burned up—" Carson said agitatedly, "if you do, everybody here—"

"Won't that be too bad!" the skipper said ironically. "But you won't be here. You'll be on the yacht. Don't worry. Now go fix it for the girl and him to walk into our parlor."

Carson's hand shook as he reached for the beamphone. His voice was not quite normal as he explained to Cathy in the exchange that the skipper of the space yacht had the legal power to perform marriage ceremonies in space. And Carson, as a gesture of friendship to one of the most prominent colonists, had asked if the captain would oblige Cathy and Lon. The captain had agreed. If they made haste, he would take them out in space and marry them.

The skipper of the space yacht regarded him with undisguised scorn when he hung up the phone and mopped his face.

"Pretty girl, eh?" he asked contemptuously, "and you didn't have the nerve to grab her for yourself?" He did not wait for an answer. "I'll look her over. You get your stuff ready for when I come back in a couple of days."

"But—when you release them," Carson said shakily, "They'll report—"

The skipper looked at Carson without any expression at all. Then he went out.

Carson felt sick. But he was a very loyal employee of the Cetis Gamma Trading Company. From the windows of his air-conditioned office, he watched Lon Simpson greet Cathy on his arrival in Cetopolis. He saw Cathy put a sprig of chanel blossoms on the lapel of her very best suit, in lieu of a bridal bouquet. And he watched them go with shining faces toward the airport. He didn't try to stop them.

Later he heard the space yacht take off.

Nodalictha prepared to share the thoughts and the happiness of the female biped whose emotions were familiar, since Nodalictha was so recently a bride herself. Rhadampsicus was making notes, but he gallantly ceased when Nodalictha called to him. They sat, then, before their crude but comfortable bower on the ninth planet, all set to share the quaint rejoicing of the creatures of which Nodalictha had grown fond.

Nodalictha penetrated the thoughts of the female, in pleased anticipation. Rhadampsicus scanned the mind of the male, and his expression changed. He shifted his thought to another and another of the bipeds in the ship's company. He spoke with some distaste.

"The ones you consider your pets, Nodalictha, are amiable enough. But the others—" He frowned. "Really, darling, if you went into their minds, you'd be most displeased. They are quite repulsive. Let's forget about them and start for home. If you really care for pets, we've much more suitable creatures there."

Nodalictha pouted.

"Rhadampsicus, let's just watch their marriage ceremony. It is so cute to think of little creatures like that loving each other—and marrying—"

Rhadampsicus withdrew his thought from the space yacht and looked about the charming rural retreat he and Nodalictha had occupied. Its nitrogen-snow walls