Eric Frank Russell - Mechanistria

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MECHANISTRIA
by
Eric Frank Russell
There we were, standing on the mezzanine of Terrastroport Seven Administration Building. Not
a darned one of us knew why we had been summoned so unexpectedly or why we weren’t blasting
as usual for Venus in the morning. So we hung around, asking unanswerable questions of Each
other with our eyes and getting ourselves nowhere. I had once seen thirty Venusian guppies gaping
in adenoidal dumbfoundment at an Aberdeen terrier named Fergus and straining their peanut brains
for the reason why one end waggled. They looked pretty much as we were looking right now.
Portly and bland as ever, Captain McNulty came along just as the nail-gnawing contest was
about to begin. He was followed by half a dozen of the Upsydaisy’s leading technicians and a
skinny little runt we’d never seen before. In the rear came Jay Score walking lithely over
floorboards that squeaked under his three hundred or more pounds. I never failed to be surprised by
the casual ease with which he bore his massive frame. His eyes were aglow as they gave us that all-
embracing look.
Gesturing to us to follow; McNulty led us into a room, strutted onto its small platform and
addressed us in the manner of one about to tutor a newly-formed third grade. “Gentlemen and
vedras, I have with me this afternoon the famous Professor Flettner.”
He made a precise bow toward the runt who grinned and did a bit of foot-twisting like a kid
caught snitching the fudge.
“The professor is seeking a crew for his extra-solarian vessel, the Marathon. Jay Score and six of
our technicians have volunteered to go along with me. We have been accepted and have received
the necessary extra training during the term of your leave.”
“It was a pleasure,” put in Flettner, anxious to placate us for stealing the skipper.
“The Terrestrial Government,” continued McNulty, flattered, “has approved the entire
complement of my former command, the Venusian freighter Upskadaska City. Now it’s up to you
fellows. Those who may wish to stay with the Upskadaska City can leave this meeting and report
for duty. Will those who prefer to accompany me please signify by raising a hand.” Then his roving
eye discovered the Martians and he hastily added, “Or a tentacle.”
Sam Hignett promptly stuck up his brown mitt. “Captain, I’d rather stay with you.”
He beat the rest of us by a fraction of a second. Funny thing, not a single one of us really was
bursting to shoot around in Flettner’s suicide-box. It was merely that we were too weak to refuse.
Or maybe we stuck out our necks for the sake of seeing the look that came into McNulty’s features.
“Thank you, men,” said McNulty in the solemn sort of voice they use at burials. He swallowed
hard, blew his nose. His gaze roamed over us almost lovingly, became suddenly abashed as it
discovered one Martian figure flopped in a corner, all its limp tentacles sprawling negligently
around.
“Why, Sug Farn --- “ he began.
Kli Yang, chief coach of the Red Planet bunch, chipped in quickly with “I put up two tentacles,
Captain. One for myself and one for him. He is asleep. He deputed me to act on his behalf, to say
yes, or say no, or sing, ‘Pop Goes The Weazel’ as required.”
Everyone laughed. Sug Farn’s utter and complete laziness had been a feature of life aboard the
Upsydaisy. The skipper alone was unaware that nothing short of an urgent outside job or a game of
chess could keep Sug Farn awake. Our laughter ended and the sleeper immediately filled in the
silence with one of those eerie, high-pitched whistles that is the Martian version of a snore.
“All right,” said McNulty, striving to keep a smile away from his mouth. “ I want you to report
aboard ship at dawn. We blast at ten ack emma G.M.T. I’ll leave Jay Score to give you further
information and answer any Questions.”
The Marathon was a real beauty, Flettner designed, government built, with fine lines halfway
between those of a war cruiser and those of a light racing rocket. Indeed, she had space-navy
fittings that were luxurious by comparison with what we’d had on the Upsydaisy. I liked her a lot.
So did the rest.
Standing at the top of the telescopic metal gangway, I watched the last comers arrive. Jay Score
went down, returned lugging his enormous case. He was allowed more weight in personal luggage
than any three others. No wonder, for only one item among his belongings was a spare atomic
engine, a lovely little piece of engineering coming to eighty pounds. In a way, this was his standby
heart.
Four government experts came aboard in a bunch. I’d no idea of who they were or why they
were going with us, but directed them to their private cabins. The last arrival was young Wilson, a
fair-haired, moody lad of about nineteen. He’d had three boxes delivered in advance and now was
trying to drag three more aboard.
“What’s in those?” I demanded.
“Plates.” He surveyed the ship with unconcealed distaste.
“Repair, dinner or dental?” I inquired.
“Photographic,” he snapped without a glimmer of a smile.
“You the official picture man?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Dump those boxes in mid-hold.”
He scowled. “They are never dumped, dropped, chucked or slung. They are placed,” he said.
“Gently.”
“You heard me!” I liked the kid’s looks but not his surly attitude.
Putting down the boxes at the top of the gangway, and doing it with exaggerated care, he looked
me over very slowly, his gaze travelling from feet to head and all the way down again. His lips
were thin, his knuckles white.
Then he said, “And who might you be when you’re outside your shirt?”
“I’m the sergeant-at-arms,” I informed in I’m-having-no-nonsense-from-you tones. “Now go
dump or place or lower those crates someplace where they’ll be safe, else I’ll toss them a hundred
feet Earthward.”
That got him right in his weak spot. I think that if I’d threatened to throw him for a loop he’d
have had a try at giving me an orbit of my own. But he didn’t intend to let me or anyone else pick
on his precious boxes.
Favouring me with a glance that promised battle, murder and sudden death, he carried the boxes
into mid-hold, taking them one at a time, tenderly, as if they were babies. That was the last I saw
of him for a while. I had been hard on the kid but didn’t realize it at the time.
A couple of the passengers were arguing in their harness just before we threw ourselves away.
Part of my job is to inspect the strappings of novices and they kept at it while I was going over their
belts and buckles.
“Say what you like,” offered one, “but it works, doesn’t it?”
“I know damn well it does,” snorted the other, showing irritation. “That is the hell of it. I’ve
been right through Flettner’s crazy mathematics a thousand times, until my mind’s dizzy with
symbols. The logic is all right. It’s un-assailable. Nevertheless, the premise is completely cockeyed.
“So what? His first two ships reached the Jovian system simply by going zip! and zip! They did
the round trip in less time that any ordinary rocketship takes to make up its mind to boost. Is that
crazy?”
“It’s blatantly nuts!” swore the objector, his blood pres-sure continuing to rise. “It’s magic and
it’s nuts! Flettner says all astronomical estimates of distances can be scrapped and thrown into the
ash-can because there’s no such thing as speed inside a cosmos which itself-plasma and ether alike-
is in a series of tremendous motions of infinite variability. He says you can’t have speed or
measurable velocity where there’s nothing to which you can relate it except a fixed point which is
purely imaginary and cannot possibly exist. He claims that we’re obsessed by speeds and distances
because our minds are conditioned by established relations inside our own one-cent solar system,
but in the greater cosmos there are no limitations to which our inadequate yardstick can be
applied.”
“Me,” I put in soothingly, “I’ve made my last will and testament.”
He glared at me, then snapped to the other, “ I still say it’s looney.”,
“So’s television and arguers,” retorted his opponent, “but they both work.”
McNulty came by the door at that moment, paused, said, “Seen to that lad Wilson yet? “
“No-I’ll be there in one minute.”
“Try and cool him down, will you. He looks as if he’s in a blue funk.”
Reaching Wilson’s cabin, I found him sitting there with his harness on. He was dumb, glassy-
eyed and worried stiff.
“Ever been on a spaceship before?”
“No,” he growled.
“Well, don’t let it bother you. I admit there are rare occasions when people go up in one piece
and come down in several, but according to official statistics the roller coasters killed more last
year.”
“Do you think I’m scared? “ he demanded, standing up so quickly that he startled me.
“Me? Oh, no I” I fumbled around for words I couldn’t find. His bothered expression had
vanished and he was looking rather hard. “See here,” I said, speaking as man to man, “tell me
what’s eating you and I’ll see if I can help.”
“You can’t help.” Sitting down; he relaxed, became as moody as before. “I’m worrying about
my plates.”
“What plates?”
“Those photographic ones I brought on board, of course.”
“Heck, they’ll be safe enough‘ Besides, what good will worrying do?”
“Plenty,” he said. “When at first I let ‘em go on trust I had them walloped to powder in two
successive accidents. Then I developed the habit of worrying about them. I was doing a really
good job of worrying just before that Century Express smashup and I lost only two, both
unexposed. I worried all but six of my outfit through the big Naples quake. So it pays me, see?”
“Hell on a bike!” I said.
“Leave me alone and let me get on with my job,” he invited. Upon which he leaned backward,
tightened his harness and calmly resumed his worrying.
Can you tie that? I was still stupefied by the queer tricks of some professions when I arrived at
the scene of the uproar at the top of the starboard gangway. McNulty was bawling out the Martians.
The latter had emerged from their especial quarters where air was kept down to the three pounds
pressure to which they were accustomed. They were now outside in the alien and objectionable
atmosphere.
Somebody went solemnly down the gangway bearing Earthward an enormous vase of violently
clashing colours and exceedingly repulsive shape. The Martian chorus of protest arose crescendo.
There were shrill chirrups and much snaking of angry tentacles. I gathered that the porcelain
monstrosity was Kli Morg’s chess trophy, the Martian notion of a championship cup. It was in vile
taste from the Terrestrial viewpoint. Anyway, the skipper’s orders were orders and the abomination
stayed on Earth.
Next instant the siren howled its thirty seconds warning and all those still out of harness raced
for safety. The way those Martians ceased their oratory and beat it was something worth seeing.
I got myself fixed in the nick of time. The air-locks closed. Whooom! A giant hand tried to force
my cranium down into my boots and temporarily I passed out.
The world swelling rapidly before our bow was little bigger than Terra. Its sunlit face had a
mixture of blacks, reds and silvers rather than the old familiar browns, blues and greens. It was one
of five planets circling a sun smaller and whiter than our own. A small, insignificant group of
asteroids shared this grouping but we had no difficulty in cutting through their orbits.
I don’t know which star that sun was supposed to be. Jay Score told me it was a minor luminary
in the region of Bootes. We had picked on it because it was the only one in this area with a
planetary family and we’d selected the second planet because its present position stood in nice,
convenient relationship with our line of flight.
At that, we were going a devil of a lot too fast to circle it and submit it to close inspection before
landing in some choice spot. We were striking its orbit at a tangent with the planet immediately
ahead. The landing was to be a direct one, a hawklike dive with a muffled prayer and no prancing
around the mulberry bush.
The way Flettner’s unorthodox notions went into action was again something to bring one’s
heart into one’s gullet before it could be swallowed back. I believe that the vessel could have done
even better had its functioning not been handicapped by the limits of human endurance. McNulty
must have gained the measure of those limits with astonishing accuracy, for the deceleration and
drop brought me down alive and kicking-but I had the deep impression of my harness all over my
abused carcass for a week.
Reports from the lab said the air was twelve pounds and breathable. We drew lots for first out:
McNulty and all the government experts lost. That was a laugh! Kli Yang’s name came first out of
the hat, then an engineer named Brennand was lucky, followed by Jay Score, Sam Hignett and me.
One hour was our limit. That meant we couldn’t go much more than a couple of miles from the
Marathon. Spacesuits weren’t needed. Kli Yang could have used his head-and-shoulder
contraption to enjoy his customary three pounds pressure but he decided that he could tolerate
twelve for a mere hour without becoming surly. Hanging binoculars around our necks, we strapped
on needle-ray guns. Jay Score grabbed a tiny two-way radiophone to keep us in touch with the
vessel.
“No fooling, men,” warned the skipper as we went through the air-lock. “See all you can and be
back within the hour.”
Kli Yang, last through the lock, ran his saucer eyes over the envious ship’s company, said,
“Somebody had better go wake Sug Farn and tell him the fleet’s in port.” Then four of his ten
tentacles released their hold and he dropped to ground.
My, was that alien surface hard! Here it shone black and glassy, there it was silvery and metallic
with patches of deep crimson appearing in odd places. I picked up a small lump of silvery outcrop,
found it amazingly heavy; solid metal as far as I could tell.
I tossed the lump through the open door of the air-lock so that they could get busy analysing it,
and at once Kli Morg stuck out a furious head, goggled his eyes at the inoffensive Kli Yang and
remarked, “A blow on the cranium is not funny. The fact that you are now with a bunch of
Terrestrials doesn’t mean that you have to be equally childish.”
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