Clifford Simak - No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

But it wasn’t a book or a piece of furniture. Karen was standing at the top of the steps that ran down into the cargo space. Johnny hurried to her side. The hold was filled with glinting ore. Ore that glittered and sparkled and shimmered in the light of their helmet lamps. Unfamiliar ore. Ore that Johnny didn’t recognize and he had seen a lot of ore in years of wandering through space.

He went down the stairs and picked up a lump, studying it closely.

“Gold?” asked Karen. “Silver?”

The breath sobbed in Johnny’s throat.

“Neither one,” he said. “It’s Metal Seven!”

“Metal Seven!” she gasped, with a tremor in her voice. “Enough for dozens of ships!”

The log book would tell where the discovery had been made. Perhaps on some lonely asteroid … perhaps on one of Jupiter’s moons … perhaps clear out on the system’s rim.

Jim Franklin hadn’t been the first man to discover Metal Seven. Intrepid space-men, 500 years ago, had mined a curious new ore and were bringing it home when disaster struck. And now, through the discovery of this ship, Jim Franklin’s daughter would give to the world again the long-lost secret of that mine.

“We’ll build another ship,” said Karen. “We’ll go out again and find it.”

Johnny tossed the chunk of ore away and scrambled to his feet.

“You better go to the lock,” he said, “and signal to George to come on out. He’ll be watching.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Johnny grinned. “Get this old tub ready to move. Soon as George gets here we blast off. We’re heading for Earth with the richest cargo any ship ever hauled through space.”

“Contraption” first appeared in Star Science Fiction Stories No. 1 , an original anthology created by Frederik Pohl for Ballantine Books, which published the volume in February 1953. This story illustrates the fact that a Simak tale can have the feel of having been set in “Simak Country” without the author actually using any place names to confirm it. Indeed, “Contraption” could have taken place just down the road from “A Death in the House.”

He found the contraption in a blackberry patch when he was hunting cows. Darkness was sifting down through the tall stand of poplar trees and he couldn’t make it out too well and he couldn’t spend much time to look at it because Uncle Eb had been plenty sore about his missing the two heifers and if it took too long to find them Uncle Eb more than likely would take the strap to him again and he’d had about all he could stand for one day. Already he’d had to go without his supper because he’d forgotten to go down to the spring for a bucket of cold water. And Aunt Em had been after him all day because he was so no-good at weeding the garden.

“I never saw such a trifling young’un in all my life,” she’d shrill at him and then she’d go on to say that she’d think he’d have some gratitude for the way she and Uncle Eb had taken him in and saved him from the orphanage, but no, he never felt no gratitude at all, but caused all the trouble that he could and was lazy to boot and she declared to goodness she didn’t know what would become of him.

He found the two heifers down in the corner of the pasture by the grove of walnut trees and drove them home, plodding along behind them, thinking once again about running away, but knowing that he wouldn’t, because he had no place to go. Although, he told himself, most any place would be better than staying here with Aunt Em and Uncle Eb, who really were not his uncle and aunt at all, but just a couple of people who had took him in.

Uncle Eb was just finishing milking when he came into the barn, driving the two heifers before him, and Uncle Eb still was plenty sore about the way he’d missed them when he’d brought in the other cows.

“Here,” said Uncle Eb, “you’ve fixed it so I had to milk my share and yours, too, and all because you didn’t count the cows, the way I always tell you to so you’ll be sure you got them all. Just to teach you, you can finish up by milking them there heifers.”

So Johnny got his three-legged milk stool and a pail and he milked the heifers and heifers are hard things to milk, and skittish, too, and the red one kicked and knocked Johnny into the gutter, spilling the milk he had in the pail.

Uncle Eb, seeing this, took the strap down from behind the door and let Johnny have a few to teach him to be more careful and that milk represented money and then made him finish with his milking.

They went up to the house after that, Uncle Eb grumbling all the way about kids being more trouble than they’re worth, and Aunt Em met them at the door to tell Johnny to be sure he washed his feet good before he went to bed because she didn’t want him getting her nice clean sheets all dirty.

“Aunt Em,” he said, “I’m awful hungry.”

“Not a bite,” she said, grim-lipped in the lamplight of the kitchen. “Maybe if you get a little hungry you won’t go forgetting all the time.”

“Just a slice of bread,” said Johnny. “Without no butter or nothing. Just a slice of bread.”

“Young man,” said Uncle Eb, “you heard your aunt. Get them feet washed and up to bed.”

“And see you wash them good,” said Aunt Em.

So he washed his feet and went to bed and lying there, he remembered what he had seen in the blackberry patch and remembered, too, that he hadn’t said a word about it because he hadn’t had a chance to, what with Uncle Eb and Aunt Em taking on at him all the blessed time.

And he decided right then and there he wouldn’t tell them what he’d found, for if he did they’d take it away from him the way they always did everything he had. And if they didn’t take it away from him, they’d spoil it so there’d be no fun or satisfaction in it.

The only thing he had that was really his was the old pocket knife with the point broken off the little blade. There was nothing in the world he’d rather have than another knife to replace the one he had, but he knew better than to ask for one. Once he had, and Uncle Eb and Aunt Em had carried on for days, saying what an ungrateful, grasping thing he was and here they’d gone and taken him in off the street and he still wasn’t satisfied, but wanted them to spend good money from a pocket knife. Johnny worried a good deal about them saying he’d been taken in off the street, because so far as he knew he’d never been on any street.

Lying there, in his bed, looking out the window at the stars, he got to wondering what it was he’d seen in the blackberry patch and he couldn’t remember it very well because he hadn’t seen it too well and there’d been no time to stop and look. But there were some funny things about it and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to have a good look at it.

Tomorrow, he thought, I’ll have a good look at it. Soon as I get a chance, tomorrow. Then he realized there’d be no chance tomorrow, for Aunt Em would have him out, right after morning chores, to weed the garden and she’d keep an eye on him and there’d be no chance to slip away.

He lay in bed and thought about it some more and it became as clear as day that if he wanted a look at it he’d have to go tonight.

He could tell, by their snoring, that Uncle Eb and Aunt Em were asleep, so he got out of bed and slipped into his shirt and britches and sneaked down the stairs, being careful to miss the squeaky boards. In the kitchen he climbed up on a chair to reach the box of matches atop the warming oven of the old wood-burning stove. He took a fistful of matches, then reconsidered and put back all but half a dozen because he was afraid Aunt Em would notice if he took too many.