Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (20 page)

“You’re the technician,” said Milke.

Paskell looked up from the workbench
an hour later. “It’s a very complex silicon compound. The spectroscope shows silicon, lithium, fluorine, oxygen, iron, sulfur, selenium, but I can’t begin to put a name to the stuff.”

“Call it Joe-hide,” Milke suggested.

Paskell blew into his pipe, looked solemnly down at the workbench
. “I have a tentative theory about Joe’s inner workings…”

“Well?”

“Obviously he needs energy to exist. His hide shows no radioactivity, so he must use chemical energy. At least I can’t think of any other form of energy that he could be using.”

Milke frowned. “Chemical energy? At absolute zero?”

“He’s insulated. No telling how high his internal temperature goes
.”

“What kind of chemical energy? There’s no free oxygen, no fluorine, nothing…”

“Presumably he uses whatever he can get—anything that reacts
to produce energy.”

Milke pounded his fist. “We could bait him into a trap, with, say, a chunk of solid oxygen!”

“I should certainly think so. But what kind of trap?”

Milke scowled. “A dead-fall.”

“Here on Odfars gravity is not too strong…we’d have to stack ten thousand cubic yards of rock to make an impression.”

Milke paced up and down the room. “I’ve got it!”

“Well?” said Paskell mildly.

“Perhaps you could make a detonator that we could set off from the ship.”

“Yes, that could be done.”

“Here’s
what we’ll do. We’ll set out about twenty pounds of myradyne, with the detonator in the center. Joe will come past, tuck this bundle into whatever kind of stomach he’s got. We wait till he gets a few hundred yards from the ship, then set it off.”

Paskell pursed his lips. “If events proceeded along
those lines, everything would be fine.”

“Well, why shouldn’t they? You claim that Joe eats—”

“Not ‘claim’—’theorize’.”

“—anything that produces energy. Well, the myradyne should look to him like ice cream and candy and cake all mixed up
. It’s nothing else
but
energy.”

“It’s a different kind of energy—the energy of instability. Perhaps he only digests energy of combination.”

“You’re quibbling,” said Milke with disgust. “I say the idea’s worth trying.”

Paskell shrugged. “Get out your myradyne.”

“How long will it take you to fix up a detonator?”

“Twenty minutes. I’ll hook up a battery and a spare head-set
to the cartridge…”

While Milke gingerly carried the packet of explosive across the lake, Paskell stood by the port watching. Milke surveyed the landscape with fine calculation, setting down the packet, moving it a few yards to the right, another few yards toward the defile. Finally satisfied, he looked back to Paskell for approval. Paskell signaled casually, and his hand fell against the detonation switch. He looked out toward Milke, hastily jumped into his suit, let himself through the port, ran across the lake.

Milke asked, “What’s the trouble?”

Paskell said, “That remote detonator doesn’t work. I’d better take a look at it.”

Milke stared at him truculently. “How do you know it doesn’t work?”

Paskell made a vague gesture, knelt beside the packet, unfolded the wrapping.

“You couldn’t have just sensed it,” Milke insisted.

“Well, as a matter of fact, my hand accidentally hit the switch, and it didn’t go off—so I thought I’d better run out and see what was wrong.”

Milke seemed to sink inside his suit. For a moment there was silence. “Ah,” said Paskell. “Nothing very serious; I neglected to clip down the battery leads…now
it’s ready to go—”

“I’m going back to the ship,” said Milke thickly.

Paskell glanced up toward Sigma Sculptoris. “Yes, there’s only a few moments of daylight left…”

Inside the ship, without the booster goggles, night apparently had already come to the
quicksilver lake.

Milke roused himself from his bunk where he had been quietly sitting, took his goggles,
went up into the control blister. “Nothing in sight.”

Paskell said mildly, “Maybe Joe won’t be back.”

Milke, with his back to Paskell, said nothing.

“Maybe he’s been watching us all day,” Paskell remarked.

Milke leaned forward. “There’s something moving in the gulch…there
goes the daylight. Blast it! Now I can’t see anything…and the dome’s
in the way of the searchlight again.”

In sudden inspiration Paskell said, “Use the radar!”

Milke ran to the screen, flipped some switches, set the key on Green, short
range. Paskell swung around the antenna
. “Hold it!” said Milke. “Right there!”

Paskell and Milke bent close to the screen. The plane of the lake, the bulk of the mountains, the gap were all clear. Three-legged Joe, much closer, was a blur. “Can’t you adjust it finer?” demanded Paskell.

Milke ran to the workbench, came back with a screw-driver, set the Green adjustment
to its limit. “How’s that?”

“Turn off the lights. I feel like I’m in a peep-show.”

“There, any better?”

“Yes, much better.”

Milke came back to the screen. Three-legged Joe was a barrel surmounted by a keg. The legs were a blur; flickering wisps of light to either side of the trunk seemed to indicate arm-members.

“Look,” sighed Milke. “He’s stopping by the package.”

The great trunk seemed to waver, collapse.

“He’s reaching for it.”

The shape once more reached its full height.

“He’s stopped,” said Paskell.

“He’s eating the myradyne…”

Three-legged Joe came forward, and presently blurred out past the resolving power of the set.

The ship jerked tentatively. Milke and Paskell braced themselves. Nothing more. Silence. The radar screen was empty. Paskell swivelled
the antenna. Nothing.

“He’s gone,” said Milke. “Where’s the detonator switch?”

“Wait!” Paskell whispered. He turned on the lights. “Look!”

Milke jerked back. Pressed close to the port beside his face was a rough silvery brown-gray substance.

The port suddenly showed black. A flicker of movement passed the stern port.

“Off with the lights,” hissed Milke. “Back to the radar.”

A blur of golden light resolved into an ambling barrel and keg.

“Now,” said Milke, “press the button! Quick! Before he gets out of range.”

“Just a moment,” said Paskell. “Suppose he’s smarter than we think?”

“No time for theorizing now,” cried Milke. “Where’s the button?”

Paskell pushed him away stubbornly. “First, we’d better take a look around.” He climbed into his space suit while Milke fumed and ranted.

Taking no heed, Paskell left the ship. Out the port Milke could see the glimmer of his head lamp
.

The outside port sighed open, thudded shut. Paskell came back into the ship. Milke had his finger on the switch. Paskell, unable to talk through the helmet, banged his glove against the wall. In his other hand he held up a brown packet.

Milke’s fingers fell nervously away.

Paskell split himself out of the suit. “I didn’t think he’d like myradyne,” he said in modest triumph. “The wrong kind of chemical energy. He left it beside the ship.”

“Gad!” said Milke huskily. “Twice on the same day I’m blown to smithereens…”

Paskell carefully removed the detonator. “Every day we’re learning more about Three-legged Joe.”

Milke’s voice was warm with emotion. “Every day we come closer to killing ourselves.”

“Tomorrow,” said Paskell, “we’ll try again.”

Over a cup of hot coffee Milke asked, “How do you mean, try again? So far as I can see, we’re licked. Our guns are no good, he refuses to eat our explosives. Certainly nothing in the world could poison him.”

“True.” Paskell tamped black shag into his pipe. “The methods for killing human beings don’t apply to Three-legged Joe.”

“No wonder those old goats at Merlinville gave us the laugh.”

Paskell puffed thoughtfully. “If we could concentrate enough heat on Joe, for a long enough time—”

“Nuts!” said Milke. “If we had an ocean we couldn’t even drown him.”

Paskell said through the cloud of smoke. “If we melted a puddle in the quicksilver and he fell in, and the quicksilver froze around him—”

“Impossible. Quicksilver at absolute zero is super-conductive
. We’d have to heat half the planet.”

“Super-conductive…Right. So it is.” Paskell stared dreamily into the haze. “I wonder how far the quicksilver extends around the planet?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Maybe we’ll electrocute Joe.”

“Hah!” spat Milke. “With what? Our two thousand-watt generator?”

Paskell said, “First we’ll have to check on the quicksilver.”

“On foot? With Joe pounding along behind us, breathing down our necks?”

Paskell said carelessly, “I imagine we can move as fast as Joe.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he runs like a greyhound.”

“We’ll have our guns.”

“Fat lot of good they’ll do.”

“Well—I suppose we could take up our ship and cruise around the planet. In fact it might be better…”

His companion had been completely absorbed in his theorizing when Milke
called out in alarm, “You’re setting down almost
in that defile!”

“Good,” said Paskell. “We want to have the ship as near to the gap as possible.”

“I don’t see why,” Milke said petulantly. “In fact I don’t understand what you’re up to.”

“We’re planning to electrocute Three-legged Joe,” said Paskell patiently. “We’ve been around the planet; we’ve established that the quicksilver is interconnected
everywhere except at this fifty-foot
saddle of gray chalk. We’ve got enough lead and copper aboard to bridge the gap with a fairly heavy cable—which we will do. We can melt a good connection into the quicksilver with thermite
.”

“So then?”

“While you’re installing the cable, I’ll be rigging up some kind of fancy induction coil to take power from our generator and build up watts in the round-planet circuit.”

Milke stared incredulously at Paskell. “What good will that do?”

“You’ll arrange the cable so that when Joe comes along the defile, he’ll have to take hold of the cable to break it. As soon as he does, he’ll get everything that we’ve been feeding into the circuit.”

Milke shook his head. “It won’t work.”

Paskell puffed at his pipe. “And why not, pray?”

“Think of the hysteresis
in all those miles of quicksilver—the inlets and bays and channels. There’ll be a billion little whorls and eddies…”

“There’s no energy lost,” said Paskell. “There’s no resistance, so there can’t be any production of heat.”

“There’ll be field conflicts,” insisted Milke.

“Only for a few hundredths of a second. After that the fields will necessarily enforce a flow pattern that minimizes the impedance.”

Milke shook his head. “I hope you know what you’re talking about…But—” he raised a finger “—we’ve got another problem.”

“What’s that?”

“The planet’s natural magnetism. If we start current flowing around the planet, we’re setting up artificial north and south poles. We’ll be fighting the natural field.”