The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories (60 page)

For a time, the Elves were silent. They gazed unhappily down at the ground. None of them said anything. At last they began moving away, collecting their banners and pennants.

“Yes, you may go back,” an Elf said quietly. “The war is over. The Trolls have been defeated. You may return to your filling station, if that is what you want.”

A flood of relief swept over Shadrach. He straightened up, grinning from ear to ear. “Thanks! That’s fine. That’s really fine. That’s the best news I’ve heard in my life.”

He moved away from the Elves, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them.

“Thanks an awful lot.” He grinned around at the silent Elves. “Well, I guess I’ll be running along, then. It’s late. Late and cold. It’s been a hard night. I’ll—I’ll see you around.”

The Elves nodded silently.

“Fine. Well, good night.” Shadrach turned and started along the path. He stopped for a moment, waving back at the Elves. “It was quite a battle, wasn’t it? We really licked them.” He hurried on along the path. Once again he stopped, looking back and waving. “Sure glad I could help out. Well, good night!”

One or two on the Elves waved, but none of them said anything.

Shadrach Jones walked slowly toward his place. He could see it from the rise, the highway that few cars traveled, the filling station falling to ruin, the house that might not last as long as himself, and not enough money coming it to repair them or buy a better location.

He turned around and went back.

The Elves were still gathered there in the silence of the night. They had not moved away.

“I was hoping you hadn’t gone,” Shadrach said, relieved.

“And we were hoping you would not leave,” said a soldier.

Shadrach kicked a stone. It bounced through the tight silence stopped. The Elves were still watching him.

“Leave?” Shadrach asked. “And me King of the Elves?”

“Then you will remain our king?” an Elf cried.

“It’s a hard thing for a man of my age to change. To stop selling gasoline and suddenly be a king. It scared me for a while. But it doesn’t any more.”

“You will? You
will?”

“Sure,” said Shadrach Jones.

The little circle of Elf torches closed in joyously. In their light, he saw a platform like the one that had carried the old King of the Elves. But this one was much larger, big enough to hold a man, and dozens of the soldiers waited with proud shoulders under the shafts.

A soldier gave him a happy bow. “For you, Sire.”

Shadrach climbed aboard. It was less comfortable than walking, but he knew this was how they wanted to take him to the Kingdom of the Elves.

Major Lawrence Hall bent over the binocular microscope, correcting the fine adjustment.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

“Isn’t it? Three weeks on this planet and we’ve yet to find a harmful life form.” Lieutenant Friendly sat down on the edge of the lab table, avoiding the culture bowls. “What kind of place is this? No disease germs, no lice, no flies, no rats, no—”

“No whiskey or red-light districts.” Hall straightened up. “Quite a place. I was sure this brew would show something along the lines of Terra’s
eberthella typhi.
Or the Martian sand rot corkscrew.”

“But the whole planet’s harmless. You know, I’m wondering whether this is the Garden of Eden our ancestors fell out of.”

“Were pushed out of.”

Hall wandered over to the window of the lab and contemplated the scene beyond. He had to admit it was an attractive sight. Rolling forests and hills, green slopes alive with flowers and endless vines; waterfalls and hanging moss; fruit trees, acres of flowers, lakes. Every effort had been made to preserve intact the surface of Planet Blue—as it had been designated by the original scout ship, six months earlier.

Hall sighed. “Quite a place. I wouldn’t mind coming back here again some time.”

“Makes Terra seem a little bare.” Friendly took out his cigarettes, then put them away again. “You know, the place has a funny effect on me. I don’t smoke any more. Guess that’s because of the way it looks. It’s so—so damn pure. Unsullied. I can’t smoke or throw papers around. I can’t bring myself to be a picnicker.”

“The picnickers’ll be along soon enough,” Hall said. He went back to the microscope. “I’ll try a few more cultures. Maybe I’ll find a lethal germ yet.”

“Keep trying.” Lieutenant Friendly hopped off the table. “I’ll see you later and find out if you’ve had any luck. There’s a big conference going on in Room One. They’re almost ready to give the go-ahead to the E.A. for the first load of colonists to be sent out.”

“Picnickers!”

Friendly grinned. “Afraid so.”

The door closed after him. His bootsteps echoed down the corridor. Hall was alone in the lab.

He sat for a time in thought. Presently he bent down and removed the slide from the stage of the microscope, selected a new one and held it up to the light to read the marking. The lab was warm and quiet. Sunlight streamed through the windows and across the floor. The trees outside moved a little in the wind. He began to feel sleepy.

“Yes, the picnickers,” he grumbled. He adjusted the new slide into position. “And all of them ready to come in and cut down the trees, tear up the flowers, spit in the lakes, burn up the grass. With not even the common-cold virus around to—”

He stopped, his voice choked off—

Choked off because the two eyepieces of the microscope had twisted suddenly around his windpipe and were trying to strangle him. Hall tore at them, but they dug relentlessly into his throat, steel prongs closing like the claws of a trap.

Throwing the microscope onto the floor, he leaped up. The microscope crawled quickly toward him, hooking around his leg. He kicked it loose with his other foot, and drew his blast pistol.

The microscope scuttled away, rolling on its coarse adjustments. Hall fired. It disappeared in a cloud of metallic particles.

“Good God!” Hall sat down weakly, mopping his face. “What the—?” He massaged his throat. “What the hell!”

The council room was packed solid. Every officer of the Planet Blue unit was there. Commander Stella Morrison tapped on the big control map with the end of a slim plastic pointer.

“This long flat area is ideal for the actual city. It’s close to water, and weather conditions vary sufficiently to give the settlers something to talk about. There are large deposits of various minerals. The colonists can set up their own factories. They won’t have to do any importing. Over here is the biggest forest on the planet. If they have any sense, they’ll leave it. But if they want to make newspapers out of it, that’s not our concern.”

She looked around the room at the silent men.

“Let’s be realistic. Some of you have been thinking we shouldn’t send the okay to the Emigration Authority, but keep the planet our own selves, to come back to. I’d like that as much as any of the rest of you, but we’d just get into a lot of trouble. It’s not
our
planet. We’re here to do a certain job. When the job is done, we move along. And it is almost done. So let’s forget it. The only thing left to do is flash the go-ahead signal and then begin packing our things.”

“Has the lab report come in on bacteria?” Vice-Commander Wood asked.

“We’re taking special care to look out for them, of course. But the last I heard nothing had been found. I think we can go ahead and contact the E.A. Have them send a ship to take us off and bring in the first load of settlers. There’s no reason why—” She stopped.

A murmur was swelling through the room. Heads turned toward the door.

Commander Morrison frowned. “Major Hall, may I remind you that when the council is in session no one is permitted to interrupt!”

Hall swayed back and forth, supporting himself by holding on to the door knob. He gazed vacantly around the council room. Finally his glassy eyes picked out Lieutenant Friendly, sitting halfway across the room.

“Come here,” he said hoarsely.

“Me?” Friendly sank farther down in his chair.

“Major, what is the meaning of this?” Vice-Commander Wood cut in angrily. “Are you drunk or are—?” He saw the blast gun in Hall’s hand. “Is something wrong, Major?”

Alarmed, Lieutenant Friendly got up and grabbed Hall’s shoulder. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Come to the lab.”

“Did you find something?” The Lieutenant studied his friend’s rigid face. “What is it?”

“Come on.” Hall started down the corridor, Friendly following. Hall pushed the laboratory door open and stepped inside slowly.

“What it is?” Friendly repeated.

“My microscope.”

“Your microscope? What about it?” Friendly squeezed past him into the lab. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“I blasted it.”

“You blasted it?” Friendly looked at the other man. “I don’t get it. Why?”

Hall’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

“Are you all right?” Friendly asked in concern. Then he bent down and lifted a black plastic box from a shelf under the table. “Say, is this a gag?”

He removed Hall’s microscope from the box. “What do you mean, you blasted it? Here it is, in its regular place. Now, tell me what’s going on? You saw something on a slide? Some kind of bacteria? Lethal? Toxic?”

Hall approached the microscope slowly. It was his all right. There was the nick just above the fine adjustment. And one of the stage clips was slightly bent. He touched it with his finger.

Five minutes ago this microscope had tried to kill him. And he knew he had blasted it out of existence.

“You sure you don’t need a psych test?” Friendly asked anxiously. “You look post-trauma to me, or worse.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Hall muttered.

The robot psyche tester whirred, integrating and gestalting. At last its color-code lights changed from red to green.

“Well?” Hall demanded.

“Severe disturbance. Instability ratio up above ten.”

“That’s over danger?”

“Yes. Eight is danger. Ten is unusual, especially for a person of your index. You usually show about a four.”

Hall nodded wearily. “I know.”

“If you could give me more data—”

Hall set his jaw. “I can’t tell you any more.”

“It’s illegal to hold back information during a psyche test,” the machine said peevishly. “If you do that you deliberately distort my findings.”

Hall rose. “I can’t tell you any more. But you do record a high degree of unbalance for me?”

“There’s a high degree of psychic disorganization. But what it means, or why it exists, I can’t say.”

“Thanks.” Hall clicked the tester off. He went back to his own quarters. His head whirled. Was he out of his mind? But he had fired the blast gun at
something.
Afterward, he had tasted the atmosphere in the lab, and there were metallic particles in suspension, especially near the place he had fired his blast gun at the microscope.

But how could a thing like that be? A microscope coming to life, trying to kill him!

Anyhow, Friendly had pulled it out of its box, whole and sound. But how had it got back in the box?

He stripped off his uniform and entered the shower. While he ran warm water over his body he meditated. The robot psyche tester had showed his mind was severely disturbed, but that could have been the result, rather than the cause, of the experience. He had started to tell Friendly about it but he had stopped. How could he expect anyone to believe a story like that?

He shut off the water and reached out for one of the towels on the rack.

The towel wrapped around his wrist, yanking him against the wall. Rough cloth pressed over his mouth and nose. He fought wildly, pulling away. All at once the towel let go. He fell, sliding to the floor, his head striking the wall. Stars shot around him; then violent pain.

Sitting in a pool of warm water, Hall looked up at the towel rack. The towel was motionless now, like the others with it. Three towels in a row, all exactly alike, all unmoving. Had he dreamed it?

He got shakily to his feet, rubbing his head. Carefully avoiding the towel rack, he edged out of the shower and into his room. He pulled a new towel from the dispenser in a gingerly manner. It seemed normal. He dried himself and began to put his clothes on.

His belt got him around the waist and tried to crush him. It was strong—it had reinforced metal links to hold his leggings and his gun. He and the belt rolled silently on the floor, struggling for control. The belt was like a furious metal snake, whipping and lashing at him. At last he managed to get his hand around his blaster.

At once the belt let go. He blasted it out of existence and then threw himself down in a chair, gasping for breath.

The arms of the chair closed around him. But this time the blaster was ready. He had to fire six times before the chair fell limp and he was able to get up again.

He stood half dressed in the middle of the room, his chest rising and falling.

“It isn’t possible,” he whispered. “I must be out of my mind.”

Finally he got his leggings and boots on. He went outside into the empty corridor. Entering the lift, he ascended to the top floor.

Commander Morrison looked up from her desk as Hall stepped through the robot clearing screen. It pinged.

“You’re armed,” the Commander said accusingly.

Hall looked down at the blaster in his hand. He put it down on the desk. “Sorry.”

“What do you want? What’s the matter with you? I have a report from the testing machine. It says you’ve hit a ratio often within the last twenty-four hour period.” She studied him intently. “We’ve known each other for a long time, Lawrence. What’s happening to you?”

Hall took a deep breath. “Stella, earlier today, my microscope tried to strangle me.”