The Star Beast (16 page)

Her needles were clicking like machinery. “I suppose so,” she admitted.

“Mr. Stuart?”

“Wait a minute. Mother, you don’t think I’d…”

“Please, Mr. Stuart! The Museum of Natural History has no place in a family discussion. You know our offer. Will you accept?”

Mrs. Stuart interrupted. “I don’t believe you mentioned the price, Mr. Perkins.”

“Why, so I didn’t! Shall we say twenty thousand?”

“Net?”

“Net? Oh, no…subject to the claims we’ll have to settle, of course.”

“‘Net,’ Mr. Perkins,” she said firmly.

He shrugged. “Net.”

“We accept.”

“Good.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” protested John Thomas. “We don’t either. Not if this other thing isn’t settled. I’m not going to turn Lummox over to…”

“Quiet! Dear, I’ve been patient but we’ll have no more of this nonsense. Mr. Perkins, he accepts. Do you have the papers with you?”

“We don’t either accept!”

“Just a moment,” Mr. Perkins appealed. “Ma’am, am I correct in thinking that I must have your son’s signature for a valid bill of sale?”

“You’ll get it.”

“Hmm. Mr. Stuart?”

“I’m not going to sign unless it’s settled that Lummox and I stay together.”

“Mrs. Stuart?”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I think so, too. But there is nothing I can do.” Perkins stood up. “Good night, Mr. Stuart. Thanks for letting me speak my piece—and for letting me see Lummox. No, don’t get up; I can find the door.”

He started to leave, while the Stuarts were busy not looking at each other. He paused at the door. “Mr. Stuart?”

“Huh? Yes, Mr. Perkins?”

“Would you do me a favor? Get as many pictures of Lummox as possible? Color-stereo-motion-sound if you can. I would have a professional crew flown here but there may not be time. You know. It would be a shame indeed if there were not some scientific record left of him. So do what you can.” He turned away again.

John Thomas gulped and was up out of his chair. “Mr. Perkins! Hey! Come back.”

A few minutes later he found himself, signing a bill of sale. His signature was shaky but legible. “Now Mrs. Stuart,” Mr. Perkins said smoothly, “if you will sign underneath, where it says ‘Guardian’…thanks! Oh yes! I must scratch out that part about ‘subject to settlement of claim.’ I don’t have the cash with me; I got here after the banks had closed, so I’ll pass over a nominal sum to bind it and we’ll settle the rest before we move the specimen.”

“No,” said John Thomas.

“Eh?”

“I forgot to tell you. The Museum can settle the claims, since I can’t and after all Lummox did it. But I’m not going to take any money. I’d feel like Judas.”

His mother said sharply, “John Thomas! I won’t let you…”

“Better not say it, Mum,” he said dangerously. “You know what Dad would have thought.”

“Hrrumph!” Mr. Perkins cleared his throat loudly. “I’m going to fill in the usual legal fiction of a nominal sum. I won’t stay longer; Judge O’Farrell told me that he goes to bed at ten. Mrs. Stuart, I consider the Museum bound by my offer. Mr. Stuart, I’ll leave you to settle with your mother in your own way. Good night all!” He shoved the bill of sale in his pocket and left quickly.

An hour later they were still facing each other wearily and angrily across the living room. John Thomas had let himself be bullied into conceding that his mother could take the money, as long as he was not required to touch it. He had given this in exchange, he thought, for permission to accept the job with Lummox.

But she shook her head. “Quite out of the question. After all, you are about to go to college. You couldn’t take that beast along. So you had no reason to expect to keep him with you anyhow.”

“Huh? But I thought you had meant to take care of him…the way you promised Dad…and I would have seen him on week ends.”

“Keep your father out of this! I might as well tell you right now that I made up my mind long ago that the day you went away to school this household would cease to be a zoo. This present mix-up has simply moved up the date a few days.”

He stared at her, unable to answer.

Presently she came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Johnnie? Johnnie dear…”

“Huh?”

“Look at me, darling. We’ve had some bitter words and I’m sorry they were ever spoken… I’m sure you did not mean them. But Mum has only been thinking of your welfare, you know that? Don’t you?”

“Uh, I suppose so.”

“That’s all Mum ever thinks about…what’s best for her big boy. You’re young, and when a person is young, things seem important that aren’t. But as you grow older, you will find that Mum knew best. Don’t you see that?”

“Well… Mum, about that job. If I could only…”

“Please, dear. Mother has a splitting headache. We’ll say no more about it now. Get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow you’ll see things differently.” She patted his cheek, bent down and kissed him. “Good night, dear.”

“G’night.”

He sat there long after she had gone up, trying to figure things out. He knew that he should feel good…he’d saved Lummie; hadn’t he?

But he did not feel good; he felt like an animal that has chewed a leg off to escape a trap…shock and misery, not relief.

At last he got up and went outside to see Lummox.

CHAPTER VIII

The Sensible Thing To Do

JOHN THOMAS
stayed with Lummox a short time only, as he could not bear to tell him the truth and there was nothing else to talk about. Lummox sensed his distress and asked questions; at last John Thomas pulled himself together and said, “There’s nothing wrong I tell you! Shut up and go to sleep. And be darn sure you stay in the yard, or I’ll beat you bow-legged.”

“Yes, Johnnie. I don’t like it outside anyway. People did funny things.”

“Just remember that and don’t do it again.”

“I won’t Johnnie. Cross my heart.”

John Thomas went in and up to bed. But he did not go to sleep. After a while he got up, dressed in part, and went up to the attic. The house was very old and had a real garret, reached by a ladder and scuttle hole in an upper hallway closet. Once there had been a proper staircase but it had been squeezed out when the landing flat was built on the roof, as the space had been needed for the lazy lift.

But the attic was still there and it was John Thomas’s only private place. His room his mother “tidied” sometimes, even though it was his duty (and wish) to do it himself. Anything might happen when Mum tidied. Papers might be lost, destroyed, or even read, for Mum believed that there should be no secrets between parents and children.

So anything he wanted to keep to himself he kept in the attic; Mum never went there—ladders made her dizzy. He had a small, almost airless and very dirty room there which he was supposed to use only for “storage.” Its actual uses were varied: he had raised snakes there some years before; there he kept the small collection of books which every boy comes by but does not discuss with parents; he even had a telephone there, an audio extension run from the usual sound & sight instrument in his bedroom. This last was a practical result of his high-school course in physics and it had been real work to wire it, as it not only had to be rigged when Mum was out of the house and in such a way that she would not notice it but also it had to be done so as not to advertise its presence to the phone company’s technicians.

But it worked, jury-rigged though it was, and he had added a “servant” circuit which flashed a warning light if anyone was listening from any other instrument in the house.

Tonight he had no wish to call anyone and it was past the hour when direct messages were permitted at the dormitory where Betty lived. He simply wanted to be alone…and to look over some papers he had not looked at in a long time. He fumbled under his work table, flipped a toggle; a panel opened in what appeared to be blank wall. In the cupboard thus exposed were books and papers. He took them out.

One item was a thin-paper notebook, his great grandfather’s diary of the
Trail Blazer
’s second voyage of exploration. It was more than a hundred years old and showed the wear of many hands. John Thomas had read it a dozen times; he supposed that his father and his grandfather had done the same. All the pages were fragile, many had been repaired.

He thumbed through it, turned the pages carefully, but browsing rather than reading. His eye lit on one remembered item:

“…some of the lads are panicky, especially the married men. But they should of thought of it before they signed up. Everybody knows the score now; we burst through and came out somewhere not close to home. Who cares? We meant to travel, didn’t we?”

John Thomas turned a few more pages. He had always known the story of the
Trail Blazer
; it produced in him neither awe nor wonder. One of the first interstellar ships, her crew had plied the profession of discovery with the same acceptance of the unknown that bad marked the golden days of the fifteenth century, when men had braved uncharted seas in wooden vessels. The
Trail Blazer
and her sisters had gone out the same way, burst through. the Einstein barrier, taken their chances on getting back. John Thomas Stuart
VIII
had been aboard her that second voyage, had come home in one piece, married, begat a male child, and settled down…it was he who had built the landing flat on the roof.

Then one night he had heard the call of the wild goose, signed up again. He had not come back.

John Thomas located the first mention of Lummox:

“This planet is a fair imitation of good old Terra, which is a relief after the last three, since we can hit dirt without suiting up. But evolution must have been playing double-or-nothing here, instead of the four-limbed arrangement considered stylish at home practically everything here has at least eight legs…‘mice’ that look like centipedes, rabbitlike creatures with six short legs and one pair of tremendous jumping legs, all sorts up to things as big as giraffes. I caught one little fellow (if you can call it that…fact is, he came up and crawled into my lap) and I was so taken with him that I am going to try to keep him as a mascot. He puts me in mind of a dachshund puppy, only better engineered. Cristy had the airlock watch, so I was able to get him aboard without turning him over to Biology.”

The next day’s entry did not mention Lummox, being concerned with a more serious matter:

“We hit the jackpot this time… Civilization. The officers are, so excited they are almost off their heads. I’ve seen one of the dominant race at a distance. The same multi-legged pattern, but otherwise making you wonder what would have happened to Earth if the dinosaurs had made good.”

Still further on…:

“I’ve been wondering what to feed Cuddlepup. I needn’t have worried. He likes everything I’ve sneaked out of the mess for him…but he will eat anything that is not riveted down. Today he ate my Everlasting stylus and it has me worried. I don’t suppose the ink cartridge will poison him but how about the metal and plastic? He’s just like a baby; everything he can reach goes in his mouth.

“Cuddlepuppy gets cuter every day. The little tyke seems to be trying to talk; he whines at me and I whine back at him. Then he crawls into my lap and tells me that he loves me, plain as anything. I’ll be switched if I’ll let Biology have him, even if they catch me. Those birds would likely as not cut him up just to see what makes him tick. He trusts me and I’m not going to let him down.”

The diary skipped a couple of days; the
Trail Blazer
had made an emergency raise-ship and Assistant Power man J. T. Stuart had been too busy to write. John Thomas knew why…the negotiations opened so hopefully with the dominant race had failed…no one knew why.

The captain fled to save his ship and his crew. They had blasted away and had again broken through the Einstein barrier without obtaining from the sentient race the astronomical data they had hoped to get.

There were only a few more entries concerning Lummox-Cuddlepup; John Thomas put the diary aside, finding that reading about Lummox was more than he could stand. He started to put everything back into his hideaway; his hand fell on a small, privately-printed book titled
A FEW NOTES ABOUT MY FAMILY
. It had been written by his grandfather. John Thomas Stuart
IX
, and Johnnie’s father had brought it up to date before he had gone on his last patrol. It belonged in the family library, beside the massive official biography of John Thomas Stuart
VI
, but Johnnie had sneaked it upstairs and his mother had never missed it. He knew it as well as he knew the diary, but he started thumbing through it to get his mind off Lummox.

The record started in 1880, with John Thomas Stuart. Who his people had been nobody knew, as he had come from a little Illinois town that kept no birth records in that remote day. He himself had confused the record beyond recovery by running away to sea at fourteen. He had sailed the China trade, lived through beatings and bad food, and eventually had ‘swallowed the anchor,’ a retired sea captain of the dying age of sail. He had built the old house John Thomas was in.

John Thomas, Junior, had not gone to sea. Instead he had killed himself flying a boxkite affair termed an “aeroplane.” That had been before the first of the World Wars; for several years thereafter the house had. received “paying guests.”

J. T. Stuart
III
had died to greater purpose; the submarine of which he was gunnery officer had penetrated Tsushima Straits to the Sea of Japan, but had failed to return.

John Thomas Stuart
IV
was killed on the first trip to the Moon.

John Thomas
V
had emigrated to Mars; his son, the famous name in the family, Johnnie skipped over quickly; he had long since grown tired of being reminded that he bore the same name as General Stuart, first governor of the Martian Commonwealth after the revolution. Johnnie wondered what would have happened to his great great great grandfather if the revolution had failed? Would they have hanged him?…instead of putting up statues of him?