Robert Sheckley - The Eryx

That was the scavenging aspect. Of course, the main push was to find the folks who had left that stuff. But those guys just didn’t seem to be around anymore. What happened to the vanished civilizations of the galaxy? That was a question that interested a lot of people. You know how much interest there is on Earth in vanished peoples. You don’t, Julie? Take my word for it. Folks find it romantic.

Although the first buying spree was over, alien artifacts was still a pretty good racket. Even though there were a lot of people out there working it, the ruins scattered around the galaxy were a long way from being picked over. Just too many planets, too many ruins. And too few spaceships.

So Gomez and I talked about this stuff, there in the hazy cigarette smoke and beer smell, among Indians and tourists and farmers. After a while Gomez said, “You know, Dalton, we could make a good team. You’re a spaceship jockey, and I’ve got the art-appraisal skills we’d need.”

“I agree,” I told him. “But we lack just one thing. A ship. And some backers.”

Investing in spaceships to go scavengering in was a popular speculation in those days. You’d be surprised how many people were able to get their hands on a spaceship. For a while, every country in the world felt it needed at least one spaceship for national prestige. There was a time when there were more working ships than qualified men to ran them. I had the know-how, and I had the right attitude. I mean, I was no pure-science freak. I liked to make a profit.

“I could maybe help us find something,” Gomez said. “I know some people, did some art appraising for them last year. They were pleased with the results. I heard them talking about going into deep-space exploration.”

“Sounds like a natural to me,” I said. “Fifty-fifty between us, OK? Where do we see these guys?”

“Let me make a phone call,” Gomez said.

He went away, came back in a few minutes.

“I talked with Mr. Rahman in Houston. He’s interested. We’ve got a meeting with him day after tomorrow.”

“Rahman? What kind of name is that? Arab?”

“He’s Indonesian.”

Rahman had a suite at the Star of Texas. He was in town doing an oil deal with some Texas wildcatters. He was a little skinny guy, colored a medium brown, a shade darker than Gomez. Little mustache. He didn’t wear no native clothes. Italian silk suit, must have cost thousands. He was a Moslem, but there was no silly stuff about not drinking alcohol. He poured us some Jim Beam Reserve and had one himself.

We talked, casual stuff for a while, and I got the definite impression that this Rahman and his people had a lot of money they didn’t really know what to do with. A little birdie told me it might have been drug money. Not that I thought Rahman was a dealer. But he was an advance man for an Indonesian investment group, and their cash flow seemed a little heavy to be accounted for entirely from oil. But what do I know? Just an impression, and his willingness to do business with Gomez and me, a couple of unknowns.

First he went over my credentials. They were pretty good if I do say so myself. I’d worked ships for NASA for a couple of years until I got into a dispute with my superior and found myself out of a job. After that I’d gotten work for a private company pushing a supply ship between Earth and the L-5 colony. That went fine until L-5 went bust and I was out of work again. I had the papers and newspaper clippings to document everything.

“Your credentials look good to me, Mr. Dalton,” Rah-man said. “I already know Mr. Gomez’s work. We’d be willing to make an arrangement with you. Salary plus ten percent of the profits on whatever you find, to be split between you and Mr. Gomez. What do you think?”

“I’d like it a lot better if you could make that ten percent for each of us. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it would be nice.”

Rahman thought for a while. I guess he was thinking that this from his point of view was mainly a way to sock away some hot money. Profit was secondary. Rahman’s group was making theirs right here on Earth.

“I suppose we could accommodate you,” Rahman said. “Come to Djakarta with me and take a look at our ship. If you approve, we’ll draw up papers. How soon can you begin?”

“We’ve started right now,” I said, looking at Gomez. He nodded.

The City of Djakarta was a pretty good ship. German manufacture, Indonesian ownership. The Krauts made pretty good ships back in those days. We signed a contract, loaded supplies, I made a few phone calls, picked up some information, and in a month we were on our way.

The first planet we checked out, Alquemar IV in Bootes, circled an O-type star in the Borodin cluster, which is a dense region of a couple thousand stars, two-thirds of them with planets. I paid a lot for the information. I got it from a technician attached to a British star-mapping expedition. He hadn’t been against earning a little on the side. There are channels where you can pick up that sort of informa-tion. I’m good with a spaceship, but I’m even better at working the channels and making a deal. This info cost a lot, but it looked like it was going to be worth it. My guy said he thought Alquemar IV had ruins, though his group hadn’t gotten close enough to be sure. When Gomez and I got there, we agreed at once that we’d struck paydirt. Now was the time to put down and let Gomez do his thing.

When I checked it out, I found Alquemar IV had enough oxygen for us, and gravity nine-tenths that of Earth. And so we went down hoping for a big strike, like Lefkowitz had when he discovered the Manupta friezes on Elgin XII, and sold them for a bundle direct to the Museum of Mod-ern Art in New York. In fact, I knew this had to be good, or I was in trouble. I was using up a lot of fuel. It’s costly to maneuver at sublight speeds in the area of planets.

It was a yellowish-brown planet with some green patches. Those patches showed where there was water and vegetation. We did an aerial recon of the largest patches, and found a section that looked good enough for us to go to the expense of putting the ship down on the ground. It’s more economical to put the ship in orbit and go back and forth by orbiter, but it also takes more equipment, to say nothing of the cost of an orbiter. We didn’t have one. When something good came up, we wanted the ship right down there with us.

There were ruins, all right. They were spread out over several hundred acres, circular ruins in a jungle. They were surrounded by what had once been a wall. The atmosphere checked out OK, no noxious stuff, so we unpacked our dirt bikes and rode into the area. The first couple days were spent just getting a feel of the place.

It took us almost a week before we hit on an area that looked worth examining closely. It was deep in the jungle, and it appeared to be the remains of a circular building. A temple, maybe. We’d call it that on the report, anyway. We went in slowly, filming everything, because film of these expeditions is worth some money, too. We were looking for just about anything. Household stuff is always good. Furniture, household items, cups, bowls, armor, weapons—anything that might look good hanging on a wall or sitting on a table in a museum or some rich guy’s house. Trouble is, it’s almost impossible to find stuff like that. The disappeared aliens don’t leave you much. It’s a mystery. Hell, everything’s a mystery.

We came across a broken staircase leading down into the ground. This was a very good sign. In most ruins, you don’t even find this much. I gave Gomez a wink. “This one’s going to make us rich, partner.”