Eric Frank Russell - Jay Score

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JAY SCORE by Eric Frank Russell
There are very good reasons for everything they do. To the uninitiated some of
their little tricks and some of their regulations seem mighty peculiar-but
rocketing through the cosmos isn't quite like paddling a bathtub across a farm
pond, no, sir!
For instance, this stunt of using mixed crews is pretty sensible when you look
into it. On the outward runs toward Mars, the Asteroids or beyond, they have
white Terrestrials to tend the engines because they're the ones who perfected
modern propulsion units, know most about them and can nurse them like nobody
else. All ships' surgeons are black Terrestrials because for some reason none
can explain no Negro gets gravity-bends or space nausea. Every outside repair
gang is composed of Martians who use very little air, are tiptop metal workers
and fairly immune to cosmic-ray burn.
As for the inward trips to Venus, they mix them similarly except that the
emergency pilot is always a big clunker like Jay Score. There's a motive
behind that; he's the one who provided it. I'm never likely to forget him. He
sort of sticks in the mind, for keeps. What a character!
Destiny placed me at the top of the gangway the first time he appeared. Our
ship was the
Upskadaska City
, a brand new freighter with limited passenger
accommodation, registered in the Venusian space-port from which she took her
name. Needless to say she was known among hardened spacemen as the
Upsydaisy
.
We were lying in the Colorado Rocket Basin, north of Denver, with a fair load
aboard, mostly watch-making machinery, agricultural equipment, aeronautical
jigs and tools for Upskadaska, as well as a case of radium needles for the
Venusian Cancer Research Institute. There were eight passengers; all
emigrating agriculturalists planning on making hay thirty million miles nearer
the Sun. We had ramped the vessel and were waiting for the blow-brothers- blow
siren due in forty minutes, when Jay Score arrived.
He was six feet nine, weighed at least three hundred pounds yet toted this
bulk with the easy grace of a ballet dancer. A big guy like that, moving like
that, was something worth watching. He came up the duralumin gangway with all
the nonchalance of a tripper boarding the bus for Jackson's Creek. From his
hamlike right fist dangled a rawhide case not quite big enough to contain his
bed and maybe a wardrobe or two.
Reaching the top, he paused while he took in the crossed swords on my cap,
said, "Morning, Sarge. I'm the new emergency pilot. I have to report to
Captain McNulty."
I knew we were due for another pilot now that Jeff Durkin had been promoted to
the snooty Martian scent-bottle Prometheus. So this was his successor. He was
a Terrestrial all right, but neither black nor white. His expressionless but
capable face looked as if covered with old, well- seasoned leather. His eyes
held fires resembling phosphorescence. There was an air about him that marked
him an exceptional individual the like of which I'd never met before.
"Welcome, Tiny,"I offered, getting a crick in the neck as I stared up at him.
I did not offer my hand because I wanted it for use later on."Open your
satchel and leave it in the sterilizing chamber. You'll find the skipper in
the bow:'
"Thanks," he responded without the glimmer of a smile. He stepped into the
airlock, hauling the rawhide haybarn with him. "We blast in forty minutes," I
warned.
Didn't see anything more of Jay Score until we were two hundred thousand out,
with Earth a greenish moon at the end of our vapour-trail. Then I heard him in
the passage asking someone where he could find the sergeant-at-arms. He was
directed through my door. "Sarge," he said, handing over his official
requisition, "I've come to collect the trimmings." Then he leaned on the
barrier; the whole framework creaked and the top tube sagged in the middle.
"Hey!" I shouted. "Sorry!" He unleaned. The barrier stood much better when he
kept his mass to himself.
Stamping his requisition, I went into the armoury, dug out his needle-ray
projector and a box of capsules for same. The biggest Venusian mud-skis I
could find were about eleven sizes too small and a yard too short for him, but
they'd have to do. I gave him a can of thin, multipurpose oil, a jar of
graphite, a Lepanto power-pack for his micro- wave radiophone and, finally, a
bunch of nutweed pellicules marked :"Compliments of the Bridal Planet Aromatic
Herb Corporation:"
Shoving back the spicy lumps, he said, "You can have 'em-they give me the
staggers." The rest of the stuff he forced into his side-pack without so much
as twitching an eyebrow. Long time since I'd seen anyone so poker-faced.
All the same, the way he eyed the space-suits seemed strangely wistful. There
were thirty bifurcated ones for the Terrestrials, all hanging on the wall like
sloughed skins. Also there were six head-and-shoulder helmets for the
Martians, since they needed no more than three pounds of air. There wasn't a
suit for him. I couldn't have fitted him with one if my life had depended upon
it. It'd have been like trying to can an elephant.
Well, he lumbered out lightly, if you get what I mean. The casual, loose-
limbed way he transported his tonnage made me think I'd like to be some place
else if ever he got on the rampage. Not that I thought him likely to run amok;
he was amiable enough though sphinxlike. But I was fascinated by his air of
calm assurance and by his motion which was fast, silent and eerie. Maybe the
latter was due to his habit of wearing an inch of sponge-rubber under his big
dogs.
I kept an interested eye on Jay Score while the Upsydaisy made good time on
her crawl through the void. Yes, I was more than curious about him because his
type was a new one on me despite that I've met plenty in my time. He remained
uncommunicative but kind of quietly cordial. His work was smoothly efficient
and in every way satis- factory. McNulty took a great fancy to him, though
he'd never been one to greet a newcomer with love and kisses.
Three days out, Jay made a major hit with the Martians. As everyone knows,
those goggle-eyed, ten-tentacled, half- breathing kibitzers have stuck harder
than glue to the Solar System Chess Championship for more than two centuries.
Nobody outside of Mars will ever pry them loose. They are nuts about the game
and many's the time I've seen a bunch of them go through all the colours of
the spectrum in sheer excitement when at last somebody has moved a pawn after
thirty minutes of profound cogitation.
One rest-time Jay spent his entire eight hours under three pounds pressure in
the starboard airlock. Through the lock's phones came long silences punctuated
by wild and shrill twitterings as if he and the Martians were turning the
place into a madhouse. At the end of the time we found our tentacled outside-
crew exhausted. It turned out that Jay had consented to play Kli Yang and had
forced him to a stalemate. Kli had been sixth runner-up in the last Solar
melee, had been beaten only ten times-each time by a brother Martian, of
course.
The red-planet gang had a finger on him after that, or I should say a
tentacle-tip. Every rest-time they waylaid him and dragged him into the
airlock. When we were eleven days out he played the six of them
simultaneously, lost two games, stalemated three, won one. They thought he was
a veritable whizzbang-for a mere Terrestrial. Knowing their peculiar abilities
in this respect, I thought so, too. So did McNulty. He went so far as to enter
the sporting data in the log.
You may remember the stunt that the audiopress of 2270 boosted as ` MeNulty's
Miracle Move'? It's practically a legend of the spaceways. Afterward, when
we'd got safely home, McNulty disclaimed the credit and put it where it
rightfully belonged. The audiopress had a good excuse, as usual. They said he
was the captain, wasn't he? And his name made the headline alliterative,
didn't it? Seems that there must be a sect of audio-journalists who have to be
alliterative to gain salvation.
What precipitated that crazy stunt and whitened my hair was a chunk of cosmic
flotsam. Said object took the form of a gob of meteoric nickel-iron ambling
along at the characteristic speed of pssst! Its orbit lay on the planetary
plane and it approached at right angles to our sunward course.
It gave us the business. I'd never have believed anything so small could have
made such a slam. To the present day I can hear the dreadful whistle of air as
it made a mad break for freedom through that jagged hole.
We lost quite a bit of political juice before the autodoors sealed the damaged
section. Pressure already had dropped to nine pounds when the compensators
held it and slowly began to build it up again. The fall didn't worry the
Martians; to them nine pounds was like inhaling pigwash.
There was one engineer in that sealed section. Another escaped the closing
doors by the skin of his left ear. But the first, we thought, had drawn his
fateful number and eventually would be floated out like so many spacemen
who've come to the end of their duty.
The guy who got clear was leaning against a bulwark, white-faced from the
narrowness of his squeak. Jay Score came pounding along. His jaw was working,
his eyes were like lamps, but his voice was cool and easy.
He said," Get out. Seal this room. I'll try make a snatch. Open up and let me
out fast when I knock."
With that he shoved us from the room which we sealed by closing its autodoor.
We couldn't see what the big hunk was doing but the telltale showed he'd
released and opened the door to the damaged section. Couple of seconds later
the light went out, showing the door had been closed again. Then came a hard,
urgent knock. We opened. Jay plunged through hell-for-leather with the
engineer's limp body cuddled in his huge arms. He bore it as if it were no
bigger and heavier than a kitten and the way he took it down the passage
threatened to carry him clear through the end of the ship.
Meanwhile we found we were in a first-class mess. The rockets weren't
functioning any more. The venturi tubes were okay and the combustion chambers
undamaged. The injectors worked without a hitch-providing that they were
pumped by hand. We had lost none of our precious fuel and the shell was intact
save for that one jagged hole. What made us useless was the wrecking of our
co-ordinated feeding and firing controls. They had been located where the big
bullet went through and now they were so much scrap.
This was more than serious. General opinion called it certain death though
nobody said so openly. I'm pretty certain that McNulty shared the morbid
notion even if his official report did under-describe it as "an embarrassing
predicament" That is just like McNulty. It's a wonder he didn't define our
feelings by recording that we were some- what nonplussed.
Anyway, the Martian squad poured out, some honest work being required of them
for the first time in six trips. Pressure had crawled back to fourteen pounds
and they had to come into it to be fitted with their head-and-shoulder
contraptions.
Kli Yang sniffed offensively, waved a disgusted tentacle and chirruped, "I
could swim " He eased up when we got his dingbat fixed and exhausted it to his
customary three pounds. That is the Martian idea of sarcasm: when- ever the
atmosphere is thicker than they like they make sinuous backstrokes and
declaim, "I could swim!"
To give them their due, they were good. A Martian can cling to polished ice
and work continuously for twelve hours on a ration of oxygen that wouldn't
satisfy a Terres- trial for more than ninety minutes. I watched them beat it
through the airlock, eyes goggling through inverted fish- bowls, their
tentacles clutching power lines, sealing plates and quasi-arc welders. Blue
lights made little auroras out- side the ports as they began to cut, shape and
close up that ragged hole.
All the time we continued to bullet sunward. But for this accursed misfortune
we'd have swung a curve into the orbit of Venus in four hours' time. Then we'd
have let her catch us up while we decelerated to a safe landing.
But when that peewee planetoid picked on us we were still heading for the
biggest and brightest furnace here- abouts. That was the way we continued to
go, our original velocity being steadily increased by the pull of our fiery
destination.
I wanted to be cremated-but not yet!
Up in the bow navigation-room Jay Score remained in constant conference with
Captain McNuIty and the two astro-computator operators. Outside, the Martians
con- tinued to crawl around, fizzing and spitting with flashes of ghastly blue
light. The engineers, of course, weren't wait- ing for them to finish their
job. Four in space-suits entered the wrecked section and started the task of
creating order out of chaos.
I envied all those busy guys and so did many others. There's a lot of
consolation in being able to do something even in an apparently hopeless
situation. There's a lot of misery in being compelled to play with one's
fingers while others are active.
Two Martians came back through the lock, grabbed some more sealing-plates and
crawled out again. One of them thought it might be a bright idea to take his
pocket chess set as well, but I didn't let him. There are times and places for
that sort of thing and knight to king's fourth on the skin of a busted boat
isn't one of them. Then I went along to see Sam Hignett, our Negro surgeon.
Sam had managed to drag the engineer back from the rim of the grave. He'd done
it with oxygen, adrenalin and heart-massage. Only his long, dexterous fingers
could have achieved it. It was a feat of surgery that has been brought off
before, but not often.
Seemed that Sam didn't know what had happened and didn't much care, either. He
was like that when he had a patient on his hands. Deftly he closed the chest
incision with silver clips, painted the pinched flesh with iodized plastic,
cooled the stuff to immediate hardness with a spray of ether. "Sam," I told
him. "You're a marvel: ' "Jay gave me a fair chance," he said. "He got him
here in time." "Why put the blame on him?" I joked, unfunnily. "Sergeant," he
answered, very serious, "I'm the ship's doctor. I do the best I can. I
couldn't have saved this man if Jay hadn't brought him when he did." "All
right, all right," I agreed. "Have it your own way." A good fellow, Sam. But
he was like all doctors-you know, ethical. I left him with his feebly
breathing patient.
McNulty came strutting along the catwalk as I went back. He checked the fuel
tanks. He was doing it person- ally, and that meant something. He looked
worried, and that meant a devil of a lot. It meant that I need not bother to
write my last will and testament because it would never be read by anything
living.
His portly form disappeared into the bow navigation- room and I heard him say,
"Jay, I guess you ------" before the closing door cut off his voice.
He appeared to have a lot of faith in Jay Score. Well, that individual
certainly looked capable enough. The skipper and the new emergency pilot
continued to act like cronies even while heading for the final frizzle.
One of the emigrating agriculturalists came out of his cabin and caught me
before I regained the armoury. Study- ing me wide-eyed, he said, "Sergeant,
there's a half-moon showing through my port."
He continued to pop them at me while I popped mine at him. Venus showing half
her pan meant that we were now crossing her orbit. He knew it too-I could tell
by the way he bugged them.
"Well," he persisted, with ill-concealed nervousness, "how long is this mishap
likely to delay us?" "No knowing." I scratched my head, trying to look stupid
and confident at one and the same time. "Captain McNulty will do his utmost.
Put your trust in him-Poppa knows best." "You don't think we are . . . er . .
. in any danger?" "Oh, not at all." "You're a liar," he said. "I resent having
to admit it," said I. That unhorsed him. He returned to his cabin,
dissatisfied, apprehensive. In short time he'd see Venus in three- quarter
phase and would tell the others. Then the fat would be in the fire.
Our fat in the solar fire.
The last vestiges of hope had drained away just about the time when a terrific
roar and violent trembling told that the long-dead rockets were back in
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