Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

“Certainly,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa. “We supply them, as it were, entertainment for the home, personal entertainment. There will be no further need for tribal living.”

“You said it, pal!” the halfling said enthusiastically.

All the rest of them were nodding in agreement.

“But it’s still no good,” yelped Butch’s Pa, getting real riled. “They’re in this world now, and how do you get them back? And while they’re here, can they do anything for us?”

“You can stop shooting off your mouth right now,” the halfling said to Butch’s Pa with utmost respect. “We can’t do anything here for you, that’s sure. In this world of yours, we can’t see ahead. And to do you any good, we have to see ahead.”

“You mean that if we give you live-its, you’ll go back home again?” asked Pa.

“Sure,” said the halfling. “Back there is our home. Just try to keep us from it.”

“We won’t even try,” Pa said. “We might even push you back. We’ll give you the live-its and you get back there and start to work for us.”

“We’ll work for you hard,” said the halfling, “but not all the time. We take out some time for looking at the live-it. That all right with you?”

“Sure,” Pa agreed. “Sure, that’s O.K. with us.”

“All right,” said the halfling, “get us back where we belong.”

I turned around and walked out of the crowd, out to the edge of it. For it was all settled now and I had a belly full of it. It would be all right with me if we never had any more excitement in the neighborhood.

Up by the barn I saw Fancy Pants limping along on the ground. He was having a tough time walking. But I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. He had it coming.

I figured in just a little while I’d go up around the barn and clobber him for that time he mopped up the road with me.

It should be an easy job, I told myself, with him grounded by his Pa for thirty days.

“Spaceship in a Flask” was purchased by Astounding Science Fiction early in 1941; they paid Cliff seventy-five dollars and published the story in July 1941. It is one of the many Simak stories that features a newspaperman protagonist, and it displays a bit of the culture of the era, which often included, among other things, crusty, streetwise reporters who lived in uneasy truces with mobsters—for a while.

Old Eli was plastered when I found him in the Sun Spot, one of the many disreputable dives situated against the walls of the domed city of New Chicago on the Twilight Belt of Mercury.

I had been afraid of that. As soon as I had heard the old Sunwarder was in town, I had set out to track him down by checking all the joints. The Sun Spot was the thirty-third.

Eli always was good for a story—the kind of a story the Solar Press ate up. No one in New Chicago believed a word he said, especially that yarn about being a couple of hundred years old. Some of the stuff he told about the Sunward side might be true, for few men ventured there, but the story about his age was just too much to swallow.

Most of his tales were alcoholic. He had to have a bit of glow to do much talking. But this time I saw he was pretty far gone.

He regarded me across the table with bleary eyes.

“I was a-comin’ to see you, son,” he cackled. “Kept thinkin’ all the time, ‘I gotta go see Sherm.’ “ He shoved the bottle at me. “Grab yourself a snort, son.”

I shook my head. “Can’t. Doctor’s orders. Got a lousy stomach.”

He guffawed in minor key and pounded the table in drunken mirth.

“I remember now. Doggone if I don’t. Always taking pills or something, ain’t you?”

“Capsules,” I said, icily. I can’t appreciate jokes about my stomach.

“Don’t need water nor nothin’ to wash them down,” he went on. “Just pop them into your mouth and swallow. Funniest danged thing I ever see. Me, I never took a pill without a heap of gaggin’.”

He hoisted the bottle and let it gurgle.

“What did you do this trip?” I asked.

“Not much of nothin’,” said Eli. “Couldn’t find a thing. This danged planet is getting’ too crowded. Too many prospectors runnin’ around. Bumped into a feller out there, I did. First time that has ever happened. Don’t like it. Have to go out to Pluto where a man’s got elbow room.”

He wrestled the bottle again and wiped his whiskers.

“Wouldn’t have come in at all ‘cept I had to bring Doc some of them salts of his.”

“What salts are those?” I asked.

“What! Ain’t I ever told you about them salts. Doc buys them off of me. Danged if I know why. Don’t seem to be good for nothin’.”

He reached into a bulging coat pocket, pulled forth a canvas bag and slung it on the table.

“Take a look,” he urged. “Maybe you can tell me what it is. Doc pays me good for it. Takes good care of me, too. Caught the fever out on Venus, long time ago. He gives me injections to fight it off.”

Eli stumbled a little over ‘injections’ but finally made it.

“Who is this Doc?” I asked quietly, afraid I’d scare him into silence. “One of the doctors here in town?”

“Nope. The big doc. The feller out at the sanitarium.”

“Dr. Vincent?”

“That’s the one,” said Eli. “Used to sell them to Dr. Anderson and Dr. Brown, too.”

I let that pass. It was just another one of old Eli’s tales. Both Anderson and Brown had been dead these many years, Anderson before Eli was born.

I opened the bag and poured part of its contents into one hand. Tiny, shining crystals winked, reflecting the lights above the bar.

“Took some to a chemist once,” said Eli, “but he said it wasn’t nothin’. Not valuable at least. Some peculiar combin … combi—”

“Combination.”

“That’s it. I didn’t tell him about Doc. Didn’t tell him nothin’. Thought maybe I’d made a find and could cash in on it. Thought maybe Doc was takin’ me for a ride. But the chemist said it wasn’t worth a thing. Offered to sell him some but he didn’t want any. Out of his line, he said.”

“Maybe you’d let me have some. Just a sample,” I suggested, still afraid of scaring him off. For I sensed, even then, that he was telling me something he shouldn’t tell.

He waved a generous hand.

“Take some. Take a lot. Take all you want.”

I felt in my pockets.

“I haven’t anything to put it in,” I said.

He cackled at me, hoisting the bottle.

“Fill up a couple of them pills of yours. Dump out the stuff that’s in them. Won’t do you any good. Likker’s the only thing for a touchy stomach.”

“Good idea,” I said, grinning at him.

I pulled three of the capsules apart, spilled out the powders, refilled them with the salts and carefully placed them in my vest pocket. The bag I shoved back across the table.

“Where do you find this stuff?” I asked.

Eli wagged a shaky finger.

“Secret,” he whispered, huskily.

His eyes, I saw, were blearier than ever. He wobbled even as he sat. But his hand snaked out with what amounted to instinct to cuddle the bottle.

“Good drinkin’ likker,” he mumbled. “Good for the stomach—”

His head drooped and rested on the table. The bottle tipped and the little remaining liquor splashed onto the floor.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said to the man behind the bar.

“Soon as he sobers up,” the man told me, “he’ll light out for Sunward. Been going there for years. Queer old duck. Figure there’s anything to him claiming he’s a couple hundred years old?”

“Not a chance,” I told him.

He held a glass up to the light, blew on it, polished it with a cloth until it shone.