Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

Wilcox shook his head slowly, settling back against the tape machine. Then he shrugged and bowed faintly. “The chianti, sir!”

I turned my head toward the bottles, and Eve started forward. Then I yelled as Wilcox shoved his hand down toward the tape machine. The gun came out on a spring as he touched it.

Muller shot once, and the gun missed Wilcox’s fingers as the engineer’s hand went to his hip, where blood was flowing. He collapsed into the chair behind him, staring at the spot stupidly. “I cut my teeth on tough ships, Mr. Wilcox,” Muller said savagely.

The man’s face was white, but he nodded slowly, and a weak grin came onto his lips. “Maybe you didn’t exaggerate those stories at that,” he conceded slowly. “I take it I drew a short straw.”

“Very short. It wasn’t worth it. No profit from the piddling sale of drugs is worth it.”

“There’s a group of strings inside the number one fuel locker,” Wilcox said between his teeth. The numbness was wearing off, and the shattered bones in his hip were beginning to eat at him. “Paul, pull up one of the packages and bring it here, will you?”

I found it without much trouble—along with a whole row of others, fine cords cemented to the side of the locker. The package I drew up weighed about ten pounds. Wilcox opened it and scooped out a thimbleful of greenish powder. He washed it down with wine.

“Fatal?” Muller asked.

The man nodded. “In that dosage, after a couple of hours. But it cuts out the pain—ah, better already. I won’t feel it. Captain, I was never piddling. Your ship has been the sole source of this drug to Mars since a year or so after I first shipped on her. There are about seven hundred pounds of pure stuff out there. Grundy and the others would commit public murder daily rather than lose the few ounces a year I gave them. Imagine what would happen when Pietro conscripted the Wahoo and no drugs arrived. The addicts find out no more is coming—they look for the peddlers—and they start looking for their suppliers….”

He shrugged. “There might have been time and ways, if I could have gotten the ship back to Earth or Jupiter. It might have been recommissioned into the Earth-Mars-Venus run, even. Pietro’s injunction caught me before I could transship, but with another chance, I might have gotten the stuff to Mars in time…. Well, it was a chance I took. Satisfied?”

Eve stared at him with horrified eyes. Maybe I was looking the same. It was plain enough now. He’d planned to poison the plants and drive us back. Murder of Hendrix had been a blunder when he’d thought it wasn’t working properly. “What about Sam?” I asked.

“Blackmail. He was too smart. He’d been sure Grundy was smuggling the stuff, and raking off from him. He didn’t care who killed Hendrix as much as how much Grundy would pay to keep his mouth shut—with murder around, he figured Grundy’d get rattled. The fool did, and Sam smelled bigger stakes. Grundy was bait to get him down near here. I killed him.”

“And Lomax?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was bluffing. But he kept going from room to room with a pocketful of chemicals, making some kind of tests. I couldn’t take a chance on his being able to spot chromazone. So I had Grundy give him my keys and tell him to go ahead—then jump him.”

And after that, when he wasn’t quite killed, they’d been forced to finish the job. Wilcox shrugged again. “I guess it got out of hand. I’ll make a tape of the whole story for you, Captain. But I’d appreciate it if you’d get Napier down here. This is getting pretty messy.”

“He’s on the way,” Eve said. We hadn’t seen her call, but the doctor arrived almost immediately afterwards.

He sniffed the drug, and questioned us about the dose Wilcox had taken. Then he nodded slowly. “About two hours, I’d say. No chance at all to save him. The stuff is absorbed almost at once and begins changing to something else in the blood. I’ll be responsible, if you want.”

Muller shrugged. “I suppose so. I’d rather deliver him in irons to a jury, but…. Well, we still have a lottery to hold!”

It jerked us back to reality sharply. Somehow, I’d been fighting off the facts, figuring that finding the cause would end the results. But even with Wilcox out of the picture, there were twelve of us left—and air for only ten!

Wilcox laughed abruptly. “A favor for a favor. I can give you a better answer than a lottery.”

“Pop-corn! Bullard!” Eve slapped her head with her palm. “Captain, give me the master key.” She snatched it out of his hand and was gone at a run.

Wilcox looked disappointed, and then grinned. “Pop-corn and beans. I overlooked them myself. We’re a bunch of city hicks. But when Bullard forgot his fears in his sleep, he remembered the answer—and got it so messed up with his dream and his new place as a hero that my complaint tipped the balance. Grundy put the fear of his God into him then. And you didn’t get it. Captain, you don’t dehydrate beans and pop-corn—they come that way naturally. You don’t can them, either, if you’re saving weight. They’re seeds—put them in tanks and they grow!”

He leaned back, trying to laugh at us, as Napier finished dressing his wound. “Bullard knows where the lockers are. And corn grows pretty fast. It’ll carry you through. Do I get that favor? It’s simple enough—just to have Beethoven’s Ninth on the machine and for the whole damned lot of you to get out of my cabin and let me die in my own way!”

Muller shrugged, but Napier found the tape and put it on. I wanted to see the louse punished for every second of worry, for Lomax, for Hendrix—even for Grundy. But there wasn’t much use in vengeance at this point.

“You’re to get all this, Paul,” Wilcox said as we got ready to leave. “Captain Muller, everything here goes to Tremaine. I’ll make a tape on that, too. But I want it to go to a man who can appreciate Hohmann’s conducting.”

Muller closed the door. “I guess it’s yours,” he admitted. “Now that you’re head engineer here, Mr. Tremaine, the cabin is automatically yours. Take over. And get that junk in the fuel locker cleaned out—except enough to keep your helpers going. They’ll need it, and we’ll need their work.”

“I’ll clean out his stuff at the same time,” I said. “I don’t want any part of it.”

He smiled then, just as Eve came down with Bullard and Pietro. The fat cook was sobered, but already beginning to fill with his own importance. I caught snatches as they began to discuss Bullard’s knowledge of growing things. It was enough to know that we’d all live, though it might be tough for a while.

Then Muller gestured upwards. “You’ve got a reduced staff, Dr. Pietro. Do you intend going on to Saturn?”

“We’ll go on,” Pietro decided. And Muller nodded. They turned and headed upwards.

I stood staring at my engines. One of them was a touch out of phase and I went over and corrected it. They’d be mine for over two years—and after that, I’d be back on the lists.

Eve came over beside me, and studied them with me. Finally she sighed softly. “I guess I can see why you feel that way about them, Paul,” she said. “And I’ll be coming down to look at them. But right now, Bullard’s too busy to cook, and everyone’s going to be hungry when they find we’re saved.”

I chuckled, and felt the relief wash over me finally. I dropped my hand from the control and caught hers—a nice, friendly hand.

But at the entrance I stopped and looked back toward the cabin where Wilcox lay. I could just make out the second movement of the Ninth beginning.

I never could stand the cheap blatancy of Hohmann’s conducting.