Robert Sheckley: Accept No Substitutes

The surrogate gave no sign of understanding. Garvey moved away. The surrogate pushed back her long hair and began to move toward him. Her intentions were unmistakeable.

Garvey backed away, step by step. He noticed that the surrogate was beginning to breathe heavily. Panic overtook him then, and he sprinted through the cabin door, slamming it behind him. The surrogate smashed against the door, calling to him in a clear, wordless voice. Garvey went to the instrument panel and began to evacuate the air from the after cabin.

Dial hands began to swing, Garvey heaved a sigh of relief and collapsed into a chair. It had been a close thing. He didn’t like to think what would have happened if the Algolian sexual substitute had managed to seize him. Probably he would not have lived through the experience. He felt sorry at the necessity of killing so magnificent a creature, but it was the only safe thing to do.

He lighted a cigarette. As soon as she was dead, he would jettison her, crate and all, into space. Then he would get good and drunk. And at last, he would return to Earth a sadder and wiser man. No more substitutes for him! Plain, old-fashioned girls were good enough. Yessir, Garvey told himself, if women were all right for my father, they’re all right for me. And when I have a son, I’m going to say to him, son, stick with women. They’re all right. Accept no substitutes. Insist upon the genuine article...

He was getting giddy, Garvey noticed. And his cigarette had gone out. He resisted a tremendous desire to giggle, and looked at his gauges. The air was leaving the after cabin, all right. But it was also leaving the control room.

Garvey sprang to his feet and inspected the cabin door. He swore angrily. That damned surrogate had managed to spring the hinges. The door was no longer airtight.

He turned quickly to the control board and stopped the evacuation of air. Why, he asked himself, did everything have to happen to him?

The surrogate renewed her battering tactics. She had picked up a metal chair and was hammering at the hinges.

But she couldn’t break through a tempered-steel door, Garvey told himself. Oh, no. Not a chance. Never.

The door began to bulge ominously.

Garvey stood in the center of the control room, sweat rolling down his face, trying desperately to think. He could put on a spacesuit, then evacuate all the air from the ship...

But the spacesuits, together with the rest of his equipment, were in the after cabin.

What else? This is serious, Garvey told himself. This is very serious. His mind seemed paralyzed. What could he do? Raise the temperature? Lower it?

He didn’t know what the surrogate could stand. But he had a suspicion it was more than he could take.

One hinge shattered. The door bent, revealing the surrogate behind it, pounding relentlessly, her satiny skin glistening with perspiration.

Then Garvey remembered his revolver. He snatched it out of its holster and flipped off the safeties, just as the last hinge cracked and the door flew open.

“Stay in there,” Garvey said, pointing the revolver.

The Algolian substitute moaned, and held out her arms to him. She smiled dazzlingly, seductively, and advanced upon him.

“Not another step!” Gamy shrieked, torn between fear and desire. He took aim, wondering if a bullet would stop her...

And what would happen if it didn’t.

The surrogate, her eyes blazing with passion, leaped for him. Garvey gripped the revolver in both shaking hands and began shooting. The noise was deafening. He fired three times, and the surrogate kept on coming.

“Stop!” Garvey screamed. “Please stop!”

Slower now, the surrogate advanced.

Garvey fired his fourth shot. Limping now, the surrogate came on, her desire unchecked.

Garvey backed to the wall. All he wanted now was to live long enough to get his hands on the factory operator. The surrogate gathered herself and pounced.

At point-blank range, Garvey fired his last shot.

Three days later, Garvey’s ship received clearance and came down at Boston Spaceport. The landing was not made with Garvey’s usual skill. On the final approach he scored a ten-foot hole in the reinforced concrete landing pit, but finally came to rest.

Eddie Starbuck hurried out to the ship and banged on the port “Ralph! Ralph!”

Slowly the port swung open.

“Ralph! What in hell happened to you?” Starbuck cried.

Garvey looked as though he had been wrestling with a meat grinder and come out second-best. His face was bruised, and his hair had been badly scorched. He walked out of the ship with a pronounced limp.

“A power line overloaded,” Garvey said. “Had quite a tussle before I could put everything out.”

“Wow!” Starbuck said. “Look, Ralph, I’m sorry to put you through this now, but—well—”

“What’s up?”

“Well, that damned surrogate still hasn’t been found. The FBI has ordered inspection of all ships, private and commercial. I’m sorry to ask it now, after all you’ve been through—”

“Go right ahead,” Garvey said.

The inspection was brief but thorough. Starbuck came out and checked his list.

’’Thanks, Ralph. Sorry to bother you. That power line sure kicked up a mess, huh?”

“It did,” Garvey said. “But I was able to jettison the furniture before it smoked me out. Now you’ll have to excuse me, Eddie. I’ve got some unfinished business.”

He started to walk away. Starbuck followed him.

“Look, boy, you’d better see a doctor. You aren’t looking so good.”

“I’m fine,” Garvey said, his face set in an expression of implacable resolve.

Starbuck scratched his head and walked slowly to the control tower.

Garvey caught a heli outside the spaceport. His head was beginning to ache again, and his legs were shaky.

The surrogate’s strength and tenacity had been unbelievable. If she had been operating at her full capacity, he would never have survived. But that last shot at point-blank range had done it. No organism was constructed to take punishment like that. Not for very long.

He reached his destination in the center of Boston and paid off the heli. He was still very weak, but resolutely he marched across the street and entered a plain graystone building. His legs wobbled under him, and he thought again how fortunate he was to have gotten the surrogate.

Of course, the surrogate, with her amazing vitality, had also gotten him.

It had been brief—

But unforgettable.

He had been damned lucky to live through it. But it was his own fault for using substitutes.

A clerk hurried up to him. “Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Can I help?”

“You can. I want passage to Algol, on the first ship leaving.”

“Yes, sir. Round trip, sir?”

Garvey thought of the tall, glorious, black-haired, goldenskinned women he would find on Algol. Not substitutes this time, the real thing, with the all-important sense of judgment.

“One way,” said Ralph Garvey, with a little smile of anticipation.