Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

Doc cracked his fist in the palm of his hand.

“I see what you are getting at, Bob,” he shouted.

Quickly he spun about and made for the door.

Bob shouted after him. “Remember, Doc, keep sober. You’ll need all the sense you have.”

“Sure will,” said Doc.

Half a mile down the road he took the bottle from his pocket and flipped it into the underbrush. A few quick steps and he turned back. On hands and knees he fumbled beside the road. His questing hand touched something smooth. He lifted the bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth. The liquor gurgled down his throat.

On the road again, trudging toward town, Doc wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve.

“It wasn’t like it was just plain rotgut,” he told himself. “Been all right to throw that kind of stuff away. But it would have been downright sinful to waste good Scotch.”

Arthur Hart paced the floor of his office.

Hap Folsworth, sports editor, sat with his feet on Hart’s desk and smoked a Venus-weed cigar.

“What in hell do you suppose Bob’s run into out there?” Hart demanded of Hap. “He sends me word to wait for a real story. No hint of what it is. Nothing to go on.”

“He’s sitting down in a Venusian saloon laughing up his sleeve at you,” said Hap. “He’s getting even with you for sending him out there.”

Hart smoothed out the piece of paper that had come over the interworld teletype three hours before.

It read:

HOLD PRESSES READY FOR EXTRA. HAVE MOST IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT STORY. CAN’T BE SURE YET. WILL KNOW IN FOUR HOURS, MAYBE LESS. BOB.

Hart raged.

“Here I’ve held a secret wave length open for him ever since the last edition. The theatres will be closed pretty soon and we’ll lose all our street sales. If he’s running a sandy on me I’ll bust him wide open when he gets back.”

A boy stuck his head in the door. “Receiving signal on the New Chicago machine,” he shouted.

Hart spun about and raced after the boy. In his wake lumbered the sports editor. The city room was tense with excitement.

“Receiving signal just came over,” said Johnny Mason. “Ought to be along anytime now.”

The machine chattered and chittered, but the keys still remained motionless.

Then the machine lurched to a start.

Methodically the keys tapped out:

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK. THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED—”

“A test,” said Johnny. “The operator at New Chicago is running a test.”

Then the machine stood motionless for a moment.

“Get going,” yelled Hart, pounding the machine cover with a clenched fist.

Again the keys moved, slowly, maddeningly methodical—:

NEW CHICAGO, VENUS—DR. ANDERSON TROWBRIDGE, HEALTH OFFICER AND ONLY PHYSICIAN IN THIS TINY TRADING POST, ANNOUNCED TODAY HE HAD DISCOVERED A CURE FOR THE HUNGER DISEASE. THE CURE IS OBTAINED FROM AN HERB, KNOWN LOCALLY AS THE POLKA-DOT WEED. AN ANCIENT PLANT FROM THE PLANET MARS, BROUGHT HERE SIX YEARS AGO BY DR. JACOB HANSLER, WHO FOUND THE SEEDS IN A RUINED LABORATORY DATING BACK TO THE GENZIK DYNASTY, THE POLKA-DOT WEED IS—”

Hart rushed from the tiny cubbyhole housing the machine.

“Herb,” he shouted to his assistant editor, “get pictures of Dr. Jacob Hansler. Pictures of Bob Jackson. Pictures of Dr. Anderson Trowbridge—”

“Who in hell,” asked Herb, “is Dr. Anderson Trowbridge?”

“How in hell should I know?” roared. Hart. “Phone the International Medical Society. They’ll tell you. But get pictures! He’s the biggest news in ten years. Write headlines a foot high in three shades blacker than night. We roll in half an hour.”

He turned to Hap Folsworth.

“We’ll have them fighting to get this one,” he exulted. “We’ll get out the biggest damn extra and score the biggest scoop this city has ever seen.”

Bob Jackson sat on a log with Zeke Brown in front of Zeke’s cabin.

“Zeke,” said Bob, “you’ll have to realize that you and all the rest of the farmers here are rich. You’re just plain filthy rich. You couldn’t grow corn and you couldn’t keep chickens—but all the time you were growing the polka-dot weed. And for that you can ask your own price. This is the only place in the universe today where the polka-dot weed can be obtained. Even now ships are on their way from Earth and from Radium City to get a supply. And you boys can ask whatever you please.”

Zeke pushed back his hat and scratched his head.

“Well, you see,” he said, “it’s this way. Me and the rest of the boys ain’t hankering to hold nobody up. We understand that other people need this weed dang bad and that we can ask our own price. But all we want is a fair price. The past five years have been mighty hard years and we ought to make something out of it, but we ain’t aiming to profiteer on the misery of other folks.”

“Sure, I know about that,” said Bob. “But you fellows don’t want to be damn fools. This is your big chance. Here’s a chance to cash in on your five years and get paid well for every hour of them.”

Zeke shuffled to his feet.

“Somebody coming up the road,” he announced. “Heard a ship come in awhile ago. Maybe it’s somebody wanting the weed.”

“They haven’t had time to get here yet,” Bob pointed out.

Angus MacDonald led the party that plodded up the road through the everlasting red mud. There were five of them.

They halted outside the gate and Angus stepped forward.

“Zeke,” he said, “I got a paper to serve on you. Don’t like to do this, but it’s my duty.”

“Paper?” asked Zeke.

“Yes, a paper.” Angus reached into his inside coat pocket and drew forth a sheaf of documents.

“One of these for you,” he announced, thumbing through them.

“What’s the paper for?” asked Zeke, suspicion creeping into his voice.

“Claims you don’t own this land,” replied Angus. “Must be some mistake. You boys been living here for a good many years now. Seems if you didn’t own it, you could have found out before this.”

Cold anger dripped from Zeke’s words.

“Who claims they own it? If we don’t own it, who does own it?”

“The Venus Land Company says they own it,” declared Angus. “I sure hate to do this, Zeke.”

Zeke looked past Angus, to the other four who stood behind him.

“I suppose you snakes are the representatives for the Venus Land Company,” he stated bluntly.

One of the four stepped forward. “You’re right,” he said, “we are. And if I were you I wouldn’t try to start anything. We know how to handle smart guys when they try to make trouble.”

Bob saw that Zeke’s thumbs were hitched over his gun belt, his fingers poised over the butt of the flame at his hip.

And in that moment, Zeke was no longer a farmer dressed in dirty overalls and ragged shirt. He was something else, something that thrilled a man to see—a man ready to fight for his land.

Zeke’s words came slowly, unlike his usual drawl—and each was a danger warning, plain for all to see.

“If any of you polecats think you’re horning in on me now,” he said, “you are mistaken. And that goes for the rest of us around here, too. If you try to get rough, we’ll just naturally strew your guts all over a forty-acre pasture.”

“Don’t talk to me about the due process of law,” roared Arthur Hart. “Babble like that might impress some folks, but it leaves me cold. What I want to know is are you going to stand by and let a set of racketeers like Venus Land rob a bunch of poor Iowa farmers a second time—? Yes, I know that’s libelous, but it isn’t on paper and you can’t prove a thing. And let me tell you, mister, if you don’t act damn soon I’ll give you something you can bring a libel suit for. I’ll fix it so that you won’t get one single cock-eyed vote for any public office again. Before I get through with you you’ll think you’ve been hit by a windmill. I got three or four stories filed away that the public will fight to read. The Universal Power Trust case, just for one example. I’ll tell the people just what sort of a grafting old buzzard you are—and what’s more I’ll make it stick.”