The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories Read online

  “Mmmph,” said Thifer, grinning sourly. “Glad you like it. Most people don’t. Damned if I’ll spend any money on padding fat buttocks. I made it the hard way—hard work and hard living—and blast it if I’ll change my style now.”

  “Sensible,” agreed Magnus Ridolph. “Ah—your food is as unaffected as your accommodations?”

  “We eat,” said Thifer. “Nothing fancy but we eat.”

  Magnus Ridolph nodded. “Well, I think I’ll bathe and change clothes. Perhaps you’ll have my luggage brought in?”

  “Sure,” said Thifer. “Bathroom’s past that panel. Nice brisk shower does wonders for a man. Piped direct from the pool. Lunch in about an hour.”

  Reflecting that the sooner he resolved the mystery of oases C and D the sooner he could return to civilization, at lunchtime Magnus Ridolph announced his intention of immediate investigation.

  “Good, good,” said Thifer. “You’ll need an air-suit and something to get around in. You’ll have to go by yourself—I’ve got a stack of work to attend to. You won’t be bothered—there’s nobody at either C or D. Getting close to the eighty-fourth day.”

  Magnus Ridolph nodded in polite acquiescence.

  After lunch Thifer fitted him with an air-suit, took him behind the dome to an area cluttered with all types of boats, in varying degrees of repair.

  Magnus Ridolph chose a small homemade hopper—two light I-beams welded to form an X and fitted with a plywood platform. The hopper was lifted by jets at the tips of the X, propelled and steered by a jet under the platform. Simple, useful, foolproof.

  Armed with a small hand-gun—despite Thifer’s assurance that no living creature roamed the planet—Magnus Ridolph climbed on the platform, settled himself in an orderly fashion, tested the power-pack, inspected the fuel cartridge, flicked the switch, jiggled the controls, slowly turned the wing-nut which served as a lift control.

  The hopper rose like an elevator. Magnus Ridolph nodded coolly to Thifer, who stood watching him with a poorly concealed grin of amusement, and sent the hopper skidding up on a slant over the great gray pegmatite rampart.

  Wilderness, thought Magnus Ridolph—wilderness in the most implacable magnitude. Incomprehensible chaos of black and gray, stained vermilion in the light of Rouge and Blanche. Tables, spires, crevasses the human eye had never been designed to see, the human brain to grasp.

  Massiveness in terms of cubic miles, cubic tens of miles. Pillars of crystal threaded with crimson light. Fields of silver-shining gneiss, rippled in accurate sinusoidal waves. Canyons shadowed in the imperturbable black of airless shade. Blisters with polished floors, craters, blowholes…

  As Magnus Ridolph flew he asked himself, if there were life on Jexjeka with a volition that permitted settlement at A and B but barred it at C and D, where and how would this life manifest itself? The repetition of the eighty-four-day period indicated cyclical activity, seasonal fluctuation, obedience to some sort of law.

  Religious sacrifices? Disease with an eighty-four-day incubation period? Magnus Ridolph pursed his lips skeptically. He halted the hopper, scanned the face of Jexjeka below him, saw a vast obsidian mirror, tilted at ten or fifteen degrees. Ten miles it extended to its edge, where the surface was marred by striated conchoidal ripples.

  Magnus Ridolph dropped to twenty feet above the glistening surface. The light from the two suns penetrated the clear glass, flittered and shone from tiny aventurine flakes. Magnus Ridolph landed, alighted, stooped, looked closely at the surface. Clean polished glass, not one puff of dust.

  Magnus Ridolph climbed back on the hopper, raised it three feet, let it skid down slope to where the obsidian surface curled up into a lip. Beyond was a precipice. Magnus Ridolph floated over the edge, peered into the darkness. Sight was swallowed in the blackness.

  He let the hopper settle—down, down, down, out of the sunlight. He flicked on the lights stapled to the sides of the platform. Down, down, down—at last the bottom of the canyon loomed gray below, rose to meet him.

  The hopper came gently to rest like a piece of water-logged wood settling to the dark bed of an ocean. The canyon floor was an unidentifiable black rock with large fibrous gray crystals. Magnus Ridolph looked up, down the stony waste to the edge of his private pool of light. No dust, no evidence that living foot had rested on this secret floor.

  Raising the hopper a few feet over the rock floor he cruised slowly up the canyon. Nothing—bare rock bed, cold, dismal, forlorn. Magnus Ridolph suddenly felt a trace of uneasiness, a clamped-in feeling. He raised the hopper—up, up, up, into the pale red light of Rouge and Blanche, clear of the obsidian plain. He took his bearings and proceeded toward B.

  He was impressed by the extent of Howard Thifer’s development work. Thirty or forty acres surrounding the pool had been covered with light black loam from Thaluri II and the fiber-trunked trees with the square glass leaves ranged in row after row. On most of these trees orange-brown fruit swelled from the trunks the size of melons, ready for harvest.

  On an area set aside for pasture a dozen Thalurian cows crawled, cropping at silver spiny grass. And from the orchard a dozen shiny-skinned Thalurian natives peered at Magnus Ridolph, ducking back behind the glass foliage when he turned to look at them.

  They bore a strange resemblance to the cows, Magnus Ridolph noticed, though they stood upright and the cows half-crawled, half-wallowed. Their eyes rose on thick stalks above the headless shoulders, with the food-mouth between the eyes.

  Magnus Ridolph alighted from the hopper. The Thalurians bent their eye-stalks through the foliage, danced nervously as he approached.

  Magnus Ridolph nodded politely, glanced here, there, looked at the pool of water. Nothing of interest—he found it to be merely a pool of water, boiling slightly into the vacuum though the temperature was close to freezing. He returned to the hopper, rose high, headed for C on the other side of the planet.

  C appeared identical to B except for the absence of the Thalurians and the Thalurian cows. Peculiar, that resemblance, thought Magnus Ridolph—evolutionary kinship. No doubt a similar organic relationship existed among Earth fauna in the eyes of the Thalurians.

  He examined the trees. The ripe fruit had burst, releasing hordes of tiny pulsing corpuscles, round and red as pomegranate seeds. They jerked, quivered, urged themselves away from the parent tree.

  Magnus Ridolph looked long and carefully through the orchard. He examined it intently, minutely. Nothing—as Thifer had told him, no sign of struggle, no damage, no clues. Magnus Ridolph strolled back and forth seeking tracks, bent grass, broken twigs.

  Broken twigs? No—but several of the twigs which might have borne big glass leaves ended in bare nubbins of fiber. There was no sign of the missing leaves at the base of the tree. Magnus Ridolph whistled through his teeth. A few missing leaves might mean much or nothing. Perhaps it was normal for trees to carry leafless twigs. Magnus Ridolph tucked the idea to the back of his mind. He would question Thifer when opportunity offered.

  Up in his hopper, away to D. Identical to B and C except that it lay at the foot of a tremendous spike of red granite, which shone like bronze where the dull light of Rouge—a sliver of Rouge bulging over the horizon—struck. D was as deserted as C. A few leaves were missing from some of the trees.

  The sliver of Rouge disappeared. Darkness poured down as if the sky were a chute. Magnus Ridolph shivered in spite of the warmed air in his suit. Desolation, solitude, existed only by contrast with a mental picture of what might be.

  Such concepts never occurred to a brain in mid-space. Space was tremendous, empty—the ultimate grandeur—but neither dismal nor desolate. The loneliness of the dark orchard at D preyed on the brain only because other orchards, warm, fragrant, hospitable, existed.

  He flung the hopper high, returned to B, where it was still day. He alighted, examined the trees while the Thalurians hid and watched him with eye-stalks pushed through the glass foliage. Every twig ended in a square brittle leaf.

  Back on
his hopper, up into airless space. Very little power gave the hopper great speed in the absence of friction. And Magnus Ridolph arrived back at Station A in time for dinner.

  Thifer greeted him with initial curiosity, then ignored him, conversing in a belligerent grumbling tone to Smitz, the mine foreman, a thin sad-eyed man with hair like salt-grass. Magnus Ridolph, at the far end of the table, ate sparingly of cucumbers and a poorly-seasoned pot-pie.

  At last Thifer turned to Magnus Ridolph with an amused sardonic expression as if, now that important business had been dealt with, other matters could be considered.

  “Well,” said Thifer, “did you locate your ghosts?”

  Magnus Ridolph raised his fine white eyebrows. “Ghosts? I don’t understand you.”

  “You said once that you thought ghosts might be responsible for the disappearances.”

  “I fear you misinterpreted my words. I spoke on a level of abstraction you plainly did not comprehend. In reply to your question I saw no ghosts.”

  “See anything at all?”

  “I noticed that leaves were missing from some of the trees at C and D. Do you know why this should be?”

  Thifer, with a sly wink at Smitz, the foreman, who sat watching Magnus Ridolph with an open smile, said, “Nope. Maybe when the boys disappeared they took the leaves with ’em for souvenirs.”

  “You may have hit on the correct answer,” said Magnus Ridolph evenly. “Some sort of explanation exists. Hm—there are no other planets in the system?”

  “Nope. Not a one. Three stars, one planet.”

  “You’re certain? After all, this system, lying outside the Commonwealth, has probably not been surveyed.”

  “I’m certain. There’s just the three stars and Jexjeka.”

  Magnus Ridolph considered a moment. Then, “Jexjeka revolves around Rouge and the dark star Noir revolves around Blanche. Am I right?”

  “Right as a trivet. And Rouge and Blanche revolve around each other. Regular merry-go-round.”

  “Ha-ha-ha,” laughed Smitz.

  “Have you checked the periods of these revolutions?”

  “No. What difference does it make? It’s about as foolish as your idea about ghosts.”

  Magnus Ridolph frowned. “Allow me to be the judge of that. After all you have paid a hundred and thirty-two thousand munits for my services.”

  Thifer laughed. “I’ve got that all figured out. Don’t worry a minute. You’ll earn it. If not by detecting you’ll do it digging. We pay our men fifteen munits a day, board and room.”

  Magnus Ridolph’s voice was mild. “Do I understand you correctly? That if I am unable to explain the disappearances I refund you your fee through manual labor?”

  Thifer’s laugh boomed out again and Smitz’ drier chuckle joined his merriment.

  “You got three choices,” said Thifer. “Detect, disappear or dig. D’you think I’m such a patsy as to let you pull what you pulled on me at Azul and get away with it?”

  “Ah,” said Magnus Ridolph, “you think I dealt with you unfairly. And you brought me to Jexjeka to put me to work in your mines.”

  “You got it right, mister. I’m a hard man to deal with when I’m crowded.”

  Magnus Ridolph returned to the cucumbers. “Your unpleasant threats are supererogatory.”

  “Are what?”

  “Unnecessary. I intend to solve the mystery of the disappearances.”

  Thifer’s big mouth twisted in the aftermath of his laugh. “I’d say you were sensible.”

  “One more question,” said Magnus Ridolph. “The interval between the disappearances is what?”

  “Eighty-four days. A little over a year—a Jexjeka year, that is. The year is eighty-two days of twenty-six Earth hours each.”

  “According to this interval, when would the next critical night be due?”

  “In—let’s see—four days.”

  “Thank you,” said Ridolph and addressed himself to his cucumbers.

  “Got any ideas?” Thifer asked.

  “A large number. It is the basis of my method. I examine every conceivable hypothesis. I make an outline, expanding the sub-headings as fully as possible. If I am sufficiently thorough, among these hypotheses will be actuality.

  “So far my theories range from crevasses gaping to engulf the men through ghosts to your murdering these men yourself for some purpose of your own. Possibly insurance.”

  Smitz’ chin dropped, dangled, wobbled. He darted a startled glance at Thifer, drew slightly away.

  Thifer’s face was a blank blotch of tough leathery flesh. “Anything’s possible,” he said.

  Magnus Ridolph made a pedantic gesture with his fork. “Many things are not possible. Your concept of ghosts—pseudo-religious bogies—is impossible. Mine is not. I’ll grant that if your kind of ghosts were possible they would enjoy haunting Jexjeka. It is the bleakest, most chilling world I have ever seen.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” said Thifer grimly. “A hundred and thirty-two thousand munits, at fifteen munits a day, is—eighty-seven hundred days. You’re lucky I throw in board, room, work-clothes.”

  Magnus Ridolph rose. “I find your humor difficult to enjoy. Excuse me, please.” He bowed and left them. As the door slid back into place he heard Thifer’s booming laugh and Smitz’ ready cackle. And Magnus Ridolph smiled quietly.

  Four days to the critical night. Magnus Ridolph commandeered the hopper, flew high, flew low across the planet. He landed at the poles—to the north a slanted field of basalt steps, hexagonally fractured. To the south an undulating scoriaceous plain. Footprints here would leave marks for all eternity. But the prairie lay smooth as lamb’s-fleece for miles.

  He explored valleys and clefts, landed the hopper on razor-keen mountain crests, looking down into the black, black-pink and gray-pink tumble. Nowhere did he find a trace of the vanished men.

  He studied stations C and D with eyes that saw each square inch as a discreet area, alone and individual. And beyond the disappearance of the glass leaves, he found no circumstance which could be considered suggestive.

  The fourth day arrived. At breakfast Thifer engaged Magnus Ridolph in jovial conversation, plied him with questions about his ill-fated zoo, remarked several times at the surprising expense of feeding the exotic animals. Magnus Ridolph replied curtly. The mystery had eaten at his sheath of equanimity. And in spite of a distaste for using himself as bait he could conceive no other method by which the puzzle might be resolved.

  He loaded the hopper with such equipment as he considered might be useful—plastron rope, a grenade-rifle, a case of condensed provisions, tanks of water, brandy, an infra-red viewer, binoculars, a high-pressure atomizer which he loaded with fluorescent dye, thinking that if invisible creatures manifested themselves, he could discern that nature by spraying them with dye. Also included was a portable TV transmitter by means of which he planned to keep in touch with Thifer.

  Thifer watched the preparations with detached amusement. At last Magnus Ridolph was ready to depart. As if by sudden thought he looked ingenuously toward Thifer. “Perhaps you’d like to accompany me? You must be curious.”

  Thifer snorted his mastodonic snort. “Not that curious! I was curious to the extent of a hundred thirty-two thousand munits, that’s enough.”

  Magnus Ridolph nodded regretfully. “Well, goodby.”

  “Goodby,” said Thifer. “Turn on the transmitter as soon as you arrive. I want to see what happens.”

  The hopper rose on its four cross-arms. The propulsive jets took hold, the little platform slid off across the waste.

  Thifer watched the hopper become a pink mote, then returned inside the dome. He removed his air-suit, brewed a gallon of tea, sat beside the telescreen.

  Two hours later the call-light glowed. Thifer pushed the switch. A view of C appeared on the screen and he heard Magnus Ridolph’s voice.

  “Everything is about as usual. No sign of anything strange. I’m hovering at twenty feet. Trip lines are thre
aded entirely around the oasis. A snake could not approach without signaling its presence. The sun is setting, as you see.

  “I think I’ll turn on the flood-lights.” Thifer saw a sudden increase of illumination. “At intervals I plan to spray the area with the fluorescent dye. If anything more solid than the vacuum is present it should show up.”

  Magnus Ridolph’s voice faded off. And Thifer, watching intently, saw the view on his screen change as Magnus Ridolph slid the hopper here and there around the oasis.

  Darkness came, dead black sightlessness beyond the reach of the floodlights. On Thifer’s screen the oasis showed in harsh black and white contrast, the glass leaves on the trees glinting and twinkling like spray. Several hours passed, during which, at intervals, Magnus Ridolph made terse reports.

  “Nothing unusual. No disturbance of any sort.”

  Then Thifer heard him say, in a tone of puzzlement, “There’s a peculiar feeling—indescribable. A presence of—”

  The words broke off, the view in the screen gave a tremendous blurring swing.

  Thifer was gazing into blackness. He slowly arose. “Mmph,” he muttered. “Looks like the old goat earned his money the hard way.”

  The following day when he made a cautious survey of C, there was no sign of Magnus Ridolph, his hopper or any of his equipment. Magnus Ridolph had disappeared as completely as if Destiny had reached back in time and erased the fact of his birth.

  Thifer shrugged. It was a mystery. Evidently it would remain a mystery as he intended to spend no more money and endanger no more men towards its solution. Farm C and D eighty days out of the year, abandon them during the dangerous nights. The only sensible thing to do.

  Two days passed. On the night of the second day Thifer sat with Smitz the mine foreman and Edson the chief engineer at the long dining table. Dinner had been cleared away. The three were discussing a small refining plant at the mouth of the centaurium mine. A model stood on the table before them, mugs of beer were at hand.